Time ticks relentlessly away: before you know it you’re halfway through the afternoon and Jimmy Anderson is 41. For England, the clock has almost reached midnight. A five-Test tour of India in early 2024 is England’s only red-ball cricket for 11 months; there is two and a half years until the next Ashes series in Australia.
Anderson’s retirement is surely a matter of time (whatever he says), Stuart Broad has gone at 37, Ben Stokes’s knee is n object of fragile awe. Even Joe Root is 32. With just three twentysomethings in the current team, a changing of the guard is imminent. Who are the young prospects in the wings?
