On Sunday evening (4 December), a nation rejoiced when England’s footballers bounced back from a slow start to blow Senegal away at the World Cup in Qatar. And it wasn’t even the most thrilling England win of the week. That came the next morning, 1,400 miles further east in Rawalpindi, as England’s cricketers won a Test match in Pakistan for only the third time ever. They did it in a style to which no cricket fan is accustomed.
Ben Stokes, who took over as England’s Test captain in April, has not just lifted the team out of the doldrums after a dismal run of only one win in 17 games. Along with England’s new coach, the New Zealander Brendon McCullum, he has reinvented Test cricket, shaking it out of a torpor that had lasted pretty much forever. He has made the oldest form of international cricket every bit as exhilarating as the Twenty20 form of the sport, which happens so fast that it doesn’t even stop for a meal.
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