0Political Machinations Start Series With a Bang

Dur­ing a week in which the world saw a new Pres­id­ent elec­ted Com­mand­er-in-Chief in Amer­ica and Brit­ish Prime Min­ster Theresa May vis­ited India, it is per­haps apt the first test is com­pared to glob­al polit­ic­al machinations.
The say­ing goes that a week is a long time in polit­ics – and the say­ing would appear apt in crick­et too.
Only a few days ago many naysay­ers (myself included) were fear­ing the hosts could inflict a series white­wash on the vis­it­ors — espe­cially if the top order in par­tic­u­lar didn’t apply them­selves bet­ter.Now, merely five days later and all seems well with the world. Cer­tainly Eng­land showed a lot of char­ac­ter to come away with a points vic­tory (the score­sheet will read draw). A subtle change can make the world of dif­fer­ence and the intro­duc­tion of the lad Haseeb Hameed as open­er was a pos­it­ive if not much needed step. And he cer­tainly took his chance, excel­ling in the open­ing birth. A lot has already been writ­ten about the 19-year-old’s suit­ab­il­ity for the longer ver­sion of the game – fin­gers crossed he lives up to the hype and Eng­land have finally found a part­ner worthy to sit along­side Alastair Cook.
Good to see Rashid get in the wick­ets. He didn’t quite fin­ish India off but the fin­ish­ing line was at least in sight. Hope­fully Eng­land can main­tain this momentum into the series although at some stage they will face a dust-bowl which turns square – how they handle that remains to be seen.
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Streuth mate – or some­thing along those lines – what is hap­pen­ing to our Aus­trali­an cous­ins – fresh from a thump­ing in the first test against South Africa now they find them­selves bowled out for 85. Such a pity.