It has been another mystifying week for English cricket. Andrew Strauss appears to have solved the only two problems it doesn’t have.
Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad. Of all the issues arising from another disastrous Ashes tour, the engagement and prowess of England’s veteran seam bowlers was probably bottom of most lists. So of course, this being the ECB, they had to go.
Strauss still can’t find a replacement for himself, or Alastair Cook, opening the batting. There has been no spin bowler worthy of the description since Graeme Swann stepped down, and the middle order has all the staying power of the manager at Watford FC, but no — Anderson and Broad are this winter’s casualties, excluded from the upcoming tour of the West Indies.