Wait until next year

You would have thought Matt Prior’s back spasms brought on by playing football prior to the fourth Ashes Test would have been warning enough, wouldn’t you? But no, here we go again, with Joe Denly today hurting his knee following a tackle from Owais Shah.

Will the team ever learn? How is playing football a sensible and safe warm-up activity for a cricketer? Even footballers don’t warm up by playing football right away, they run and they stretch first. They wouldn’t leap in with wild tackles when they did start kicking the ball around, either. And they certainly don’t pick up a bat and start playing cricket.