There are still some unchanging certainties in the English cricketing summer; many of which were on show on a humid, bellicose second day of this second Test.
Specialist wicketkeepers are busy at the crease, all bottom-handed crunch and ferrety shovels. Anything with the name Strauss attached to it will be accepted as objective, unchallenged gospel (call it The Strauss Hundred and we’d never have heard a whimper). Old Trafford will continue to remake the world as a series of red glass boxes, the compulsory template for any licenced Manchester architect. Perhaps the eastern stand, currently flattened, might bring something new. We might get a grey box or a green box.
