Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley wasted little time getting back into the groove for England with a century stand against Ireland at Lord’s in what proved to be a near-perfect first day to an eagerly anticipated Test summer for the hosts.
Both openers scored fifties and played true to the aggressive ‘Bazball’ style that has taken the nation by storm since Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum took over the red-ball team last summer.
England finished the opening day of this one-off Test on 151 for one and only 20 runs behind Ireland, who were dismissed for 172 at the start of the evening session thanks to Stuart Broad’s first five-wicket haul at Lord’s in 10 years.
Broad ripped through Ireland’s top order during the first hour with a trio of scalps to reduce the tourists to 19 for three before Paul Stirling played fire with fire in an entertaining knock of 30.
Ireland opener James McCollum backed him up with 36 and all-rounder Curtis Campher chipped in with 33, but Broad would not be denied his chance to go on the Lord’s honours board and finished with five for 51 off 17 overs after good support by Jack Leach and Matthew Potts.
All eyes were then on Crawley, who kicked off an enormous two months for England with a punch through cover for four off his second ball.
It was a sign of things to come with the fifty partnership brought up after 7.2 overs and Duckett happy to cut away to the boundary on his first Test innings on home soil.
After a slight lull of 28 balls without a boundary, Crawley produced four fours from his next six balls but three were via the inside edge with the heavily scrutinised Kent batter not as fluent as his fellow opener.
Duckett beat his partner to a half-century off 53 balls with two runs down to third man during a milestone 16th over that also saw Crawley reach fifty, from 39 deliveries, with a sumptuous cover drive.
The hundred partnership was also brought up in that Mark Adair over but, in the next, the opening stand was ended when Ireland Test debutant Fionn Hand produced a stunning caught and bowled to see off Crawley for 56.
Nottinghamshire’s Duckett remained undeterred and finished the day 60 not out after England’s new vice-captain Ollie Pope helped himself to a breezy 29 not out at a sun-soaked Lord’s.
England’s start to the day had not been smooth sailing with their arrival from the team’s Kensington hotel delayed by five minutes due to Just Stop Oil protesters but once Stokes had put Ireland into bat, Broad quickly set about trying to get his name on the honours board.
In the absence of rested duo James Anderson and Ollie Robinson, the Nottinghamshire seamer relished the chance to lead the attack and produced a fine opening spell of three for 14 from five overs.
Broad had to wait until his 14th delivery to make the breakthrough but Peter Moor was pinned in front lbw for 10 and his next over produced even more drama.
Ireland captain Andrew Balbirnie edged to second slip, where Crawley took an excellent low catch diving to his left and Harry Tector followed his skipper back to the pavilion two balls later.
Tector inexplicably flicked straight to Potts at leg slip, which saw Broad produce his trademark shocked face in celebration but he was denied a hat-trick opportunity when an lbw decision against Stirling was overturned on review after ball-tracker showed it was missing leg stump.
It enabled Stirling to lead a mini-recovery and he put on 45 with opener McCollum, but Leach ended the fun of the former Middlesex batter for 30 after another attempted sweep flicked off his glove and gave Jonny Bairstow a simple first catch behind the stumps since replacing Ben Foakes.
After making it to lunch on 78 for four, Broad ended McCollum’s hard-fought 36 off 108 deliveries when he edged to Joe Root at first slip before Campher took the fight to England despite being hit on the helmet by England debutant Josh Tongue.
It saw Ireland make it through a second session but Broad claimed his 20th Test five-wicket haul after tea when he hit the top of Adair’s off-stump.
Leach had provided able support and finished with three for 35 after the dismissals of Lorcan Tucker and Campher before Potts brought the tourists’ first innings to an end when Hand edged behind to Bairstow in the 57th over.
Tape ball programme can help England find unorthodox talent – Richard Gould
The England and Wales Cricket Board hopes to unearth a new seam of talent beyond the game’s traditional league structure with a national tape ball scheme that allows players to thrive without “whites, willow and leather”.
The practice of using a soft ball wrapped in electrical tape to aid swing and variable bounce is a common one in Asia, where it has helped produce express pace bowlers like Haris Rauf, Shaheen Afridi and spinners such as Rashid Khan and Shakib-al-Hasan, but has been slow to enter the mainstream conversation in the United Kingdom.
The Chance to Shine charity has long pioneered tape ball cricket as part of its engagement hubs and now, with the ECB keen to live up to its lofty aspiration of becoming the most inclusive team sport in the country, it is at the heart of a new core cities programme designed to engage ‘diverse communities in urban areas’.
Speaking at a launch event where games were hosted in a warehouse space in Birmingham, ECB chief executive Richard Gould was optimistic about reaching out to those with an interest in cricket but limited access to the pavilions and prepared pitches in the club setup.
“We talk about clubs with picket fences around them. In the past that has been seen as the preserve of the ECB. We’ve missed a complete trick on that,” he said.
“When we talk about the recreational game we’re not just talking about Premier League clubs and village cricket clubs now. We’re talking about all forms of cricket that take place.
“You can play the game anywhere, any time, with anybody, in any environment you want. You don’t have to have whites, willow and leather to do it. You can just pick up a bat and a ball and have some fun.”
As well as fulfilling its remit of reaching out to all comers at a grassroots level, Gould also believes there are benefits to finding cricketers with different styles who have learned the game outside the traditional, private-school heavy pathways.
“Without doubt there are,” he said. “We have to get out and try to find the talent. More to the point, we have to try and find talent in areas that we haven’t normally looked for it.
“I do think county pathways will be looking to make sure they don’t miss out on this talent. It’s just about punching through all of our normal procedures and finding ways to both get people in the game and unearthing that talent which may be unorthodox and great.”
Meg Lanning: Exercise obsession and not enough fuel led to Australia retirement
Former Australia captain Meg Lanning revealed her “obsession” with exercise and not eating enough precipitated her surprise international retirement late last year.
Lanning was at the helm of one of the most dominant eras the sport has ever seen but she missed last year’s Ashes for medical reasons and pulled the plug on her Australia career in November.
She opened up about her hidden health issues on the Howie Games podcast, explaining that running up to 90 kilometres a week coupled with eating two small meals a day led to her dropping from 64kg to 57kg.
View this post on Instagram“I was over-exercising and under-fuelling,” the 32-year-old said. “It wasn’t a physical thing. I’ve always been really physically active and liked that side of it, but it became a bit of an obsession.
“I’d maybe eat a couple of meals a day if I was lucky but they weren’t significant. Initially it didn’t start off as a deliberate thing, it just became a bit of a new normal.
“But it slowly crept into conscious decisions because essentially I felt good.
“I wasn’t getting injured like everybody was telling me I was going to do. It sort of just spiralled and I was in denial, even though everybody kept telling me something wasn’t quite right.
“I was not in a place to be able to go on tour and play cricket and give the commitment levels that were required for that Ashes series, mentally and physically.”
Lanning, who led Australia to five World Cup titles in total and Commonwealth Games glory in 2022, said her struggle was not officially diagnosed as an eating disorder.
“It wasn’t labelled as that but I was exercising a lot and I wasn’t eating enough to fuel that – it was a bit out of whack,” Lanning said.
“It was a bit of control because I felt very out of control with what my future looked like. I felt like I was in control of that and that made me feel better.”
Lanning sought help from medical professionals after also struggling with insomnia and continues to play domestically, while she has been signed for London Spirit for The Hundred this year.
“I dreaded night time because I knew I would go to bed and not be able to sleep,” she said. “That would make me so mad. I would just get more angry with myself. If you can’t sleep, you can’t do anything.
“I feel like I’m in a good spot now. Cricket is still part of what I do. But I wasn’t cut out for the international touring schedule and what came with all of that.”
Yorkshire not in ECB’s new ‘Tier 1’ revamp of women’s professional game
Yorkshire will have to wait until 2027 to take part in the England and Wales Cricket Board’s new ‘Tier 1’ revamp of the women’s professional game, after eight other counties were selected to lead the way.
Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset, Surrey and Warwickshire have been chosen as hosts, with the governing body abolishing the existing regional structure in favour of alignment with the first-class counties.
The blow to Yorkshire, for whom this is a further setback after several turbulent years on and off the field, has been mitigated by a promise to bring them into an expanded competition in the third season.
Glamorgan have been given the same assurances and both will receive additional funding to help build their pathway.
But there will be no ‘Tier 1’ cricket at Lord’s in the foreseeable future, with MCC declining to put itself forward and Middlesex among those overlooked. Sussex have also been left on the outside looking in, despite a long and strong commitment to the women’s game.
They will be hoping to be included as the elite level continues to grow, with the ECB outlining plans to further expand to 12 teams by 2029.
ECB chief executive Richard Gould said: “I’d like to congratulate those counties who have been successful in their bids.
“I’m also delighted that in light of the support we have seen and the strength of the bids we have considered, we can accelerate our plans, including new top tier professional teams at Glamorgan and Yorkshire by 2027 with a further two being introduced by 2029.
“More professional teams means more women able to make a career out of being a cricketer, more role models to inspire future generations, and more of the country having a women’s professional team to follow nearby.
“I recognise today’s announcement will also be disappointing to those who haven’t been successful at this stage. But with the new three-tier structure we are introducing, there is still a huge opportunity for them to compete in the other tiers so together we can all realise the potential of women’s domestic cricket.”
Beth Barrett-Wild, the ECB’s director of the women’s professional game, praised the calibre of offers from around the country.
“At the start of this tender process we challenged the first-class counties to show us their vision for the women’s professional game and to demonstrate their desire and commitment to becoming one of our professional Tier 1 clubs,” she said.
“Over the last couple of months it’s been brilliant to see the time and energy that has gone into the submissions, and I’ve been hugely impressed by the quality and ambition of the bids.
“It’s clear that the game is united in wanting to take the women’s professional game forward. I’m energised about what comes next, for the counties themselves, for the players, for fans and for everyone who wants to see women’s cricket continue its accelerated trajectory.”
The ECB has put £5million per year of new funding into the women’s domestic set-up, rising to £8million when Yorkshire and Glamorgan come aboard.
It estimates a potential increase of 80 per cent in the number of professional female players.
There will be no promotion or relegation between 2025 and 2028, allowing the new three-tier system to bed in.
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