The team for Trent Bridge was muddled – Chris Silverwood needs to think more like the ousted national selector Ed Smith
When it wasn’t making you tear your hair out, the first Test was a lot of fun. But let’s face it, England got out of jail, thanks to Joe Root’s hundred and the last-day washout. And now, in the brief gap between the first and second Tests, there are a few knots for the management to untangle. The first one is this: how do you solve a problem like Dom Sibley?
On paper, he did a job at Trent Bridge. In making 18 and 28, he stuck around long enough to shield the middle order. But he was painful to watch, like a fearful football team, forever playing sideways. He used up an awful lot of deliveries: 70 in the first innings, 133 in the second. Of those 203 balls, he hit just four to the boundary. And he dropped a clanger when he spilt a nick from KL Rahul, his opposite number, who had 52 at the time and went on to 84.