Cricket is in flux but all is calm with a Lord’s Test

Nothing signals the start of summer like the first morning of the first Test at Lord’s, with its sell-out crowd and queue of members, that pop of corks atop murmurous hubbub. Not even this morning’s rain could ruin that.

Test cricket, the five-day form of the game, seldom seems in ruder health than on the first morning at Lord’s, either.

The sport’s flagship format — for many it’s still the only “proper cricket” — is in a near-constant state of existential crisis about everything from its playing conditions (the debates du jour are over whether to keep the toss, and whether to lop the whole thing down to four days) and its place in the world, with the advance of shorter, sharper versions and the desire for context (a World Test Championship starts next year) and for the game to appeal to a broader, younger audience.

Only yesterday did one of the great modern players, South Africa’s AB de Villiers, end his 14-year international career for a diet solely of T20 — supposedly another nail in the longer form’s coffin. All that, plus the £65 million drop in the ECB coffers over the past two years, can be put to bed for today, though.

Today Pakistan are England’s first visitors of an important summer, which also brings a five-match visit from India. For all the advances of England’s one-day side, it was a dismal winter for the Test team, with five Tests lost and two drawn on a long schlep across Australia and New Zealand. The broad shadow of Ben Stokes on the streets of Bristol never lifted. England must now get back to winning ways, and fast.

The new national selector, Ed Smith, has changed enough to provide a fresh feel — with a recall for Jos Buttler, the gallivanting batsman, and a first call for Dom Bess, a spunky spinner aged just 20. In Alastair Cook, James Anderson and Stuart Broad, England have three all-time greats playing; captain Joe Root will join them in time.

If this is an important summer for the English cricket team, the coming two are important for English cricket as a whole. A year on Tuesday, England kick off the World Cup at The Oval against South Africa. This country has never won that competition (or any major global 50-over competition, for that matter), and will never have a better chance. Hot on the heels of the mid-July final at Lord’s come a home Ashes.

Losing the Ashes 10,000 miles away in the middle of the night in an era of home dominance is one thing, losing at home for the first time in 18 years another entirely.

The following year, 2020, the ECB’s bright new brainchild, the Hundred (which at the moment seems an expensively assembled, poorly conceived idea presented even worse), comes clunking into the middle of the summer. The ECB is staking much on shortening T20 (a global phenomenon) by 20 balls, so it had better run smoothly.

That can wait, though. The five-minute bell has rung, it’s time for play.