Key events
Mid-4th over: India 50-0 (Sharma 30, Sooryavanshi 14) What would you do if you were the captain having to cope with this? Harry Brook decides to switch to spin, which, if he’d done it in an episode of Yes Minister, would have been described as bold, very bold. Will Jacks’ first ball is slapped for four, his second brings four more, but then …
3rd over: India 41-0 (Sharma 21, Sooryavanshi 14) Sooryvanshi, in the mood now, hits another six – just a pick-up shot off Tongue, easy as you like. Sharma, not to be outshone, flashes for four, off-drives for six and cover-drives for three. Welcome to T20 internationals, Josh: that’s 20 off your second over.
“I’m sort of OK with the fact that Sooryavanshi is 15,” says Matt Dony. “I mean, some 15 year olds are, indeed, mature and capable and preternaturally talented. But I think you mistyped and stated that he was born in 2011. That can’t be right, can it? Wouldn’t that make him about 5 or 6? If 2011 was truly 15 years ago, that would put me in my mid-40s? Oh. Right. Nuts…”
3rd over: India 21-0 (Sharma 8, Sooryavanshi 8) Archer beats Sharma twice outside off. The wind, if anything, is bothering the batters more than the bowlers. But when Archer tries a yorker, Sharma does well, flicking the wrists to turn a block into a glance for four.
Sooryavanshi hits his first six! Off his first ball from Archer, his fellow Royal. He gets down low, plays something between a pull and a ramp and sends tha ball whirling into the crowd. After four or five balls, he has made his presence felt already.
2nd over: India 10-0 (Sharma 4, Sooryavanshi 1) Second ball: another lavish play, another miss. Third ball: yet another miss, as Sooryavanshi shapes to whip, but it’s a wide outside leg, in fact five wides. When he finally gets bat on ball, to his third legitimate delivery, he jams down on a yorker, and gets his first run for India from an inside edge! Tongue then beats Sharma outside off too.
Somewhere in the crowd, a Lancashire member of a certain age may be muttering, “Not much to him, this lad. What’s all the fuss about?”
Sooryavanshi faces his first ball in international cricket… and misses! He flashed outside off at Josh Tongue, whose lift was too much for him.
1st over: India 4-0 (Sharma 4, Sooryavanshi 0) Never mind the prodigy, Abhishek can play a bit too. Archer starts well, beating him with a lifter, but the next ball is swished over slip for four, with one hand off the bat. Archer beats him again, and again, before finishing with a rap on the glove. The wind assisted both the bowler’s movement, away from the left-hander, and the lone scoring shot.
Sooryavanshi is out there, waiting to face his first ball in international cricket … which may well be from Jofra Archer, his team-mate at the Rajasthan Royals. But it will be Abhishek Sharma who faces the first ball of the day.
Fun fact. Adil Rashid, England’s senior pro, was playing international cricket before Vaibhav Sooryavanshi was conceived. Rashid made his debut for England’s T20 team on 5 June 2009; Sooryavanshi was born on 27 March 2011.
The teams
England have a debutant of their own – Josh Tongue, making his first appearance for them in a red shirt after doing taking dozens of wickets in a white one. Jofra Archer returns too. It’s always good to see him and Tongue is well worth a go, but it’s bizarre that there is no room for Saqib Mahmood. He shone in the gloom on Wednesday and would surely have relished the chance to maintain his red-hot form in front of his home crowd. The decision feels premeditated, rather than a response to the situation.
India 1 Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, 2 Abhishek Sharma, 3 Ishan Kishan (wkt), 4 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 5 Tilak Varma, 6 Shivam Dube, 7 Harshit Rana, 8 Axar Patel, 9 Ravi Bishnoi, 10 Arshdeep Singh, 11 Varun Chakravarthy.
England 1 Phil Salt, 2 Jos Buttler (wkt), 3 Harry Brook (capt), 4 Jacob Bethell, 5 Tom Banton, 6 Sam Curran, 7 Will Jacks, 8 Liam Dawson, 9 Adil Rashid, 10 Jofra Archer, 11 Josh Tongue.
The first email comes in from Guy Hornsby. “I know this may be down for some as another meaningless bilateral,” he says, “but even before Sooryavanshi’s debut was announced, this feels bigger than that.
“Two teams packed with stars, all the Test players back for England, and a raucous Old Trafford full of blue shirts all urging on their team to show England who is boss in the white ball game. I am certainly buzzing, and I’ve only had an ice cream!”
Iyer’s decision allows the crowd to see Vaibhav Sooryavanshi right away. His fearless hitting has already made him a superstar in the IPL: now we’ll see if he can do it on a blustery Saturday in Manchester. He will become India’s youngest-ever cricketer, beating the record held for decades by Sachin Tendulkar. He was born in 2011, for goodness’ sake. You couldn’t make him up.
Toss: India win and bat first
It’s so windy at Old Trafford that Shreyas Iyer’s cap blows off in mid-toss. But he doesn’t lose his composure, calls right and decides to make England’s bowlers cope with the gale.
Sooryavanshi starts!
They’ve seen sense and selected him! At the tender age of 15. What a moment.
Preamble
Afternoon everyone and welcome to England’s smallest game of the weekend. It’s smaller than the football, it’s smaller than the rugby, and it’s way smaller than the women’s cricket. While Nat Sciver-Brunt’s team have a World Cup final, the men are playing the second game in a T20 series that started with a wash-out and may be forgotten before it has even been noticed.
But every international fixture is big for somebody. This second game between England and India is big for the ECB, whose profits for the financial year hinge on hosting India for these two white-ball series. It’s big for English cricket, which is still reeling from Ben Stokes’ shotgun retirement. It’s big for Harry Brook, who needs to carry himself like an England captain, rather than the figure he cut last Sunday – the man at the stag weekend who’s still drunk on the flight home.
It’s big for Sam Curran, belatedly being recognised as a realistic option to succeed Stokes as the Test all-rounder and, if they really are going to burden Brook with the Test captaincy, to take over the white-ball teams. And it’s big for Jos Buttler, who, since a buccaneering 83 in his last appearance for England at Old Trafford, has gone 20 innings without a fifty – or even a forty.
It could be big, too, for someone who is not expected to play: Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, the teenage wonderboy who had to watch on Wednesday as his elders and lessers at the top of the Indian order limped to 6 for 2. The signs are that Sooryavanshi won’t be picked today either, but his international debut is surely just a flop away.
As always with international sport, there are subplots to spare, so do stick around if you can. The weather forecast is good for Manchester, and I’ll be back at 2pm (BST) with the toss and the teams.
