Good morning everyone and welcome to OBO. Today, the England World Cup champions returned to the stage of victory for the first time. It’s coming, it’s coming—yes, that’s enough. Since their epic encounter with New Zealand next week two years ago, England’s cricketers have played three tests at Rhodes, but have not played a white ball game. They never expected that the most famous venue in the world would miss a whole summer, and instead chose a venue with a hotel. They will not doubt that when they finally return, only one World Cup winner will be on board.
So this is an important moment for Ben Stokes. He appeared in ODI for the 100th time and was the first England captain at Lord’s. This was the first full house of cricket since the lock. He likes it here, at least when he has a bat in his hand: his last five innings in England, all in 2019, 89 innings, 84 innings unfinished, 9 unfinished innings, 13 unfinished innings and 115 unfinished innings, total 310 times average 155. 9 is not counted in the official record, which is ridiculous because it scored four goals in the super big ball of the World Cup final-possibly the largest pressure cooker cricket in history.
In Cardiff on Thursday, Stokes’ new players blended so well that he didn’t have to pick up the wicket or face the ball. Babar Azam’s talented Pakistan team caught a cold, is this a beginner’s luck? Does this mean that behind every great team there is another team that has been denied a good opportunity? Or does it just mean that the solution to the eternal problem of England’s choice is to choose Stokes and ten others?
The second game of the series will answer these questions to some extent, as long as the weather does not affect the audience. The forecast is that it will rain in the first half of the day, and it will rain before 3 o’clock, so we may only receive about 60 or more rains-but this is what Cardiff needs.In theory, the game starts at 11 a.m. UK time. I will come back around 10.35 for updates, and maybe even toss and team.
