England leave a little shellshocked but the evergreen Jimmy Anderson and the promise of players like Dan Lawrence mean it should not all be doom and gloom
“Productivity isn’t everything,” wrote the economist Paul Krugman. “But in the long run, it’s almost everything.” When looking for a place to point fingers in response to England’s rotation policy, replace productivity with scheduling. Of course, in a year like no other for workload, they had no option but to mix and match. It’s far from perfect, but – to borrow the maxim of these Covid times – it is what it is.