England v New Zealand: third Test, day one – live!

7th over: New Zealand 18-1 (Young 9, Williamson 9) As Broad continues, there’s another clip from Young (for three) and a near run-out from Williamson, who would be gone if Potts’sshy at the non-striker’s stumps had hit.

“Might I suggest, in the mildest and most amiable way possible,” says Bob Wilson, “that Eoin Morgan’s team did not at all lead the way on diversity in selection. The 80’s selectors did an infinitely better job and scribes under 45 risk dissing some great players if they don’t acknowledge that. Bright-burning candles like Devon Malcolm, Mark Butcher and Gladdy Small. Not to mention my own fave, Phil DeFreitas, who once projectile-vomited in his run-up and then bowled the delivery anyway (and he looked lovely in a dress). The current fall-off in representation has an uncomfortably racist underbelly but it’s principally about class, about free-to-air television and state schools’ sporting resources.

“Last year, sportswriters were doing the same puffery about the diversity of the England football team. I couldn’t help but think about how irritated that must have made Viv Anderson feel. That was a generation of players who did blaze a trail (and often got their toes pretty scorched in consequence). But given football’s decent representation rate, that ahistorical sloppiness is merely ignoring or undervaluing individual grace and moral courage. When you neglect previous POC achievement in English cricket, it is to ignore the vertiginously horrible fact that we’ve gone backwards.

I usually try to be funny but I can’t think of any jokes for this one.”

No diss intended to anyone – including the white men in the present XI. And you’re right, I didn’t mean to suggest that Morgan invented multiculturalism, just that he’s been good at maintaining it. He made a point of mentioning it when England won the World Cup. As a scribe over 45, I was in the press box when Malcolm and Daffy and Gladys and Chris Lewis were all there or thereabouts. Butcher, who came along a bit later, may end up the most significant figure of them all, as an outstanding commentator.