It was bright and loud when Sonny Baker came on to bowl for the first time in Test cricket. He hadn’t slept the night before, too many nerves, and had found, when he saw his parents at the cap ceremony before the start of play, that he was almost overwhelmed by emotion, and now here he was an hour later and the midday sun glaring off the glass of the big JM Finn Stand and the crowd all around roaring for Matt Fisher as he came in to bowl from the Vauxhall End. Baker was at mid-on and over at slip Joe Root was waving at him. Baker couldn’t tell exactly what it was Root was trying to communicate as he flapped his hands around.
Root replied in kind with a wave of his own. Root made another gesture. So did Baker. “I didn’t know whether he was trying to bring me up for that over or not,” he said later. The two of them stood a while, making frantic hand signals at each other, neither quite clear what the other was trying to sign to the other.
