The greatest sport of all returns tomorrow, England vs New Zealand at Lords but a showery week is forecast. We’re stuck with the Kiwi so have to live with it and the on field personnel are mostly familiar. I’d like to have seen a different keeper but Foakes has been injured though I doubt they’d have picked him anyway. I hope Smith does well and stops all speculation. As for the Kiwi, it’ll take more than a couple of home wins to convince me.
Crawley has gone which can be no surprise to anyone,
replaced by somebody called Emilio Gay who has been going well in the
championship, fair enough. Otherwise the
batting line up is the same although Smith and Stokes may swap places. The bowlers are mostly familiar, Bashir is
back (?!), good for him, I hope he does well.
Apparently Carse would have been in the squad but his injury opens the
door for others. Robinson is set to
return from exile, at his best he’s as good as anyone we’ve got these
days. Josh Tongue should be an automatic
choice now which leaves Gus Atkinson or the wild card Sonny Baker. Apparently he’s fast but I’d leave him for
later in the year and go with Gus.
New Zealand are a good, well drilled team with excellent batsmen and some
bowlers we’ve not seen much of before.
England should expect to win every home series but have to be at their
very best otherwise New Zealand could well win.
If England fail to win this series will anything change?
