SUITS YOU, SIR! BUT NOT FOR BOWLERS IT SEEMS

The songs of praise from Sir Andrew Strauss and Sir Alastair Cook were full-throated and from the heart.

On the scale of Sir Stuart Broad’s magnificent achievement in joining Sir James Anderson in the list of Test bowlers who have taken 500 wickets, those two England batting greats and knights of the realm were unanimous.

Lauding the 34-year-old’s success in becoming the seventh bowler, and only the fourth paceman, to reach the half-thousand mark, Strauss said: “There have been so many bowlers whose star has shone for a year or two then either they have been worked out or their confidence has deserted them and they’ve been cast aside.”

Cook said: “People had been writing him off. A couple of years ago people were saying: “When’s he finishing? It must be a great feeling for him that he can lie in bed at night knowing that when it gets tough he delivers.”

And what, dear readers, is wrong with this description?

No prizes, just the joy of sharing the reminder that cricket is, always has been, and surely must stop being a batsman’s game.

Of the 14 England cricket personalities who have felt the sword on the shoulder nine have been batsmen, two all-rounders (Gubby Allen and Ian Botham) one a cricket writer, the wonderful Sir Neville Cardus, knighted for services to music and cricket journalism and one, Sir Frederick Toone, a highly-respected administrator who, like Cardus, never actually played first-class cricket at all.