It is tempting to suggest England’s woes on the opening day of the Test series against India were symptomatic of a lack of first-class cricket of late.
Only that would avoid the fact that it was scarcely any different to the majority of their recent past in Test cricket.
Having won the toss on the opening morning at Trent Bridge, the home team were bowled out for 183 by India.
Sure, England’s players have been light on red-ball cricket of late. Plus, they were up against a couple of masters of swing, in Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami, in conditions that were helping.
But this was just same old, same old for the home side. In the past 11 innings since they last won a Test, England have passed 300 just once.
A number of their players had not played in whites at all since the start of June, when they were soundly beaten by the soon-to-be world Test champions New Zealand.
Jos Buttler was one. Little wonder, then, that he looked entirely out of sync in making an 18-ball duck, before he was finally put out of his misery by Bumrah.
Ditto Jonny Bairstow and Sam Curran. At least they managed 29 and 27 not out respectively, but that was hardly convincing.
Of the England players, only Joe Root resembled anything like a Test match batsman of substance. The captain made 64 in 108 balls, but his was a lone furrow.
Root was the seventh wicket to fall, with the score on 155. That came in the middle of a terminal collapse that saw England’s last seven wickets fall for just 45.
As limp as the home batting was, India’s attack was searingly good. Bumrah started it, with the wicket of Rory Burns in a brilliantly probing first over, with no score on the board.
It is a mystery that Shami’s record in England to date has been meagre. The fast bowler, whose skills – a bolt upright seam position, and canny control of swing – are ideally suited to the UK, was taking his wickets at an average of 44 in the country before this tour.
He is clearly keen to right that wrong this time around, given how he started this game.
Shami’s three for 28 included the wickets of Dom Sibley, Bairstow and Dan Lawrence.
Bumrah went one better as he ended with four, and was unplayable at times, most strikingly in the way he finished the innings.
India’s openers were already mentally preparing to start their effort after Bumrah trapped James Anderson lbw – only for England’s No11 to be spared on video review.
Both Anderson and Bumrah were moved to wry grins on the very next delivery, after it cannoned into the stumps following a precision yorker.
Given the way the ball was swinging, at least England’s bowlers would have been expecting to make an incision when the sides swapped round.
No joy, though, as India’s openers navigated the remaining overs to take their side to 21 for no loss by the close.
Who has been sanctioned?
Daniella Weiss and Nachala
Described as 'the grandmother of the settler movement', she has encouraged the expansion of settlements for decades. The 79 year old leads radical settler movement Nachala, whose aim is for Israel to annex Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where it helps settlers built outposts.
Harel Libi & Libi Construction and Infrastructure
Libi has been involved in threatening and perpetuating acts of aggression and violence against Palestinians. His firm has provided logistical and financial support for the establishment of illegal outposts.
Zohar Sabah
Runs a settler outpost named Zohar’s Farm and has previously faced charges of violence against Palestinians. He was indicted by Israel’s State Attorney’s Office in September for allegedly participating in a violent attack against Palestinians and activists in the West Bank village of Muarrajat.
Coco’s Farm and Neria’s Farm
These are illegal outposts in the West Bank, which are at the vanguard of the settler movement. According to the UK, they are associated with people who have been involved in enabling, inciting, promoting or providing support for activities that amount to “serious abuse”.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Six large-scale objects on show
- Concrete wall and windows from the now demolished Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in Poplar
- The 17th Century Agra Colonnade, from the bathhouse of the fort of Agra in India
- A stagecloth for The Ballet Russes that is 10m high – the largest Picasso in the world
- Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1930s Kaufmann Office
- A full-scale Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, which transformed kitchen design in the 20th century
- Torrijos Palace dome
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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