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• James Anderson and Ollie Robinson should be fit for Ashes – Brendon McCullum

  England head coach Brendon McCullum is confident James Anderson and Ollie Robinson will be fit for the first Ashes Test but has confirmed they will play no part against Ireland this week.

  The five-match series against Australia begins on June 16 but England have fitness concerns over a number of their bowlers.

  Robinson suffered an ankle issue for Sussex earlier this month and Anderson strained his groin while on Lancashire duty while injury-hit pair Jofra Archer and Olly Stone have experienced elbow and hamstring problems respectively already this summer.

  England begin their eagerly anticipated summer with a four-day Test against Ireland at Lord’s on Thursday and while two of their key bowlers will miss out, they should be fine for the Ashes opener at Edgbaston.

  “Yeah we’ve got a couple of niggles so we’re just monitoring those at the moment. I guess every team that goes into a series has got a couple of little things that you need to work through, but pretty confident we’ll have a good squad to be able to pick from,” McCullum insisted.

  On Robinson and Anderson, he added: “For the first Ashes Test, I think they should be fit.

  “They won’t be fit for this one against Ireland. We’ll just have to monitor it over this next sort of while, but we’ve got some great options right throughout the squad.

  “When I first took over this job, people said there wasn’t much depth in English cricket and I disagree with that completely.

  “I think there is an immense amount of depth and we’ve got plenty of good options throughout the squad.”

• Tatum on White's buzzer-beater: 'That s*** was crazy!'

  Boston Celtics hero Derrick White said "It just had to be won" after his buzzer-beating tip-in forced the Eastern Conference finals to Game 7, as Jayson Tatum added: "That s*** was crazy!"

  From 3-0 down against the Miami Heat, the Celtics have fought back to 3-3 in the series, and are now just one win away from making history.

  White grabbed and then sank the rebound from Marcus Smart's failed three-pointer with 0.1 seconds remaining to seal a 104-103 victory in Miami on Saturday.

  The Celtics are now on the brink of the greatest comeback in NBA playoffs history, needing a win at home in Game 7 on Monday to become the first team to win a series after losing the first three games.

  Boston are only the fourth NBA team to erase a 3-0 deficit in a best-of-seven series to force a deciding game.

  Reflecting on the game-winning moment, Tatum told reporters: "I'm still, like, in disbelief. That s*** was crazy.

  "That felt like the longest 10 seconds ever waiting for confirmation if he made it or not."

  White told TNT: "It had to be won. Whatever it takes, our backs against our wall, it just had to be won.

  "We're a resilient group. We pick each other up, we bond for each other.

  "The job isn't done yet, we've got a tough one Game 7, we've got to find a way to get one more win."

  White had tears sparkling in his eyes, but explained: "I'm just happy. So far, so good."

  It is just the second time in league history that a player has hit a buzzer-beater when his team was down and facing elimination, after Michael Jordan's legendary "The Shot", way back in 1989.

  "Derrick White, like a flash of lightning, just came out of nowhere and saved the day, man," team-mate Jaylen Brown added. "An incredible play."

  The Heat can only lick their wounds as they head to Boston for Monday's winner-takes-all matchup.

  Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said: "It's a seven-game series. There's nothing better than Game 7s.

  "I don't know how we're going to get this done, but we're going to go out there and get it done, and that's what the next 48 hours is about.

  "There's been nothing easy about this season for our group, and so we just have to do it the hard way."

  Jimmy Butler did his best for Miami, with 24 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists.

  "We've got to go on the road and do something special, but we've got a special group," Butler said.

• Has ‘Bazball’ taken hold in county cricket? What the numbers tell us

  The men at the forefront of England’s red-ball revolution – Ben Stokes, Brendon McCullum and Rob Key – have made it clear they would like to see their dynamic approach to the game replicated across the county network.

  Players from within the England dressing room have been invited to spread the word while back with their clubs and a get-together of first-class coaches and directors of cricket earlier this year saw Zoom presentations from Stokes and McCullum advocating their new methods.

  ‘Bazball’ was the talk of the shires in the build-up to the 2023 season, but what do the numbers tell us about its impact on the LV= County Championship ahead of the first Test of the summer?

  Run-rates

  It was perhaps ambitious to expect the first phase of the county season to hit the heights of England’s most frenzied scoring, particularly with soft early-season pitches and a lively Dukes ball for 2023. Stokes’ England reached a crescendo in Pakistan, when they scored at 5.50 runs per over – the highest ever in a series of three or more Tests – but unsurprisingly that bar has proved tough to meet.

  Division Two pace-setters Durham lead the way, scoring their 3,357 runs at a lively 4.20, but the only other side to go at more than four an over, Yorkshire, have had a very different experience. They are tracking at 4.09 but have scored only 2,229 runs in total and are winless in eighth place in the second tier.

  Another eight teams are scoring at more that 3.50 an over, while Division One’s bottom club Northamptonshire are outliers having made their runs at a relatively pedestrian 2.82.

  Individual performers

  Stokes has repeatedly said where runs are concerned he is just as interested in ‘how?’ as ‘how many?’, challenging Test hopefuls to catch the eye with dashing displays. Durham wicketkeeper Ollie Robinson has done more than anyone else to live up to that billing, scoring 465 runs from 527 balls for a strike rate of 88.23 runs per 100 balls.

  In the top flight two players already inked into the Test XI have carried the torch, Ben Duckett scoring 401 runs with a strike rate of 74.39 while Stokes’ new vice-captain Ollie Pope has 379 and 74.16. Unlike them, Somerset’s Tom Kohler-Cadmore has yet to clear the 500-ball mark for the season but his combination of 348 runs at 80.55 marks him out for attention.

  Dan Lawrence, called up as batting cover for the Ireland Test, is some way behind on a strike rate of 57.26, while Lancashire’s Josh Bohannon has 471 runs at 67.96. Dom Sibley, once a fixture at the top of England’s Test line-up, looks a long way back with his strike rate of 43.71 placing him close to the bottom of the ladder.

  Win, lose or draw

  A feature of England’s Test cricket over the past 12 months has been their stated aversion to draws. With an eye on entertainment and a belief that pushing hard for victory is worth the price of defeat, the McCullum era has effectively removed the idea of sharing the spoils.

  While a few counties suggested they were willing to engage with the same philosophy, it has proved harder than expected. Heavy rain has wreaked havoc with fixtures, with some teams worse affected than others, while extending the number of runs required for bonus points has also made forcing results more taxing inside four days.

  So far 25 games have been drawn out of 52 (11 in Division One, 14 in Division Two), with five from five for a well-fancied Lancashire side. Table-toppers Surrey and Durham are both rewarded for getting over the line four times in six attempts.