Nottingham on the third Saturday morning in May. Green buses 4, 6, and 9 roar across the Trent Bridge, where the inn has been open for hours. The streets have a gentle bustle to them, an impression of impending activity.
So it appeared on this leisurely day as the East Midlands bid farewell to spring. Canyoned clouds floated against a silver-blue sky, and the shorts worn on the middle terrace at the Radcliffe Road End revealed more than a mulish determination to defy the weather.
The white-painted stands inside the cricket stadium were flecked with red shirts. We were nearing the end of the football season, and thus only five minutes away from the start of the next.
Some others were watching a few hours of cricket before heading to the City Ground to see the mighty Arsenal. Fast food restaurants were preparing for a busy afternoon and evening in the streets surrounding Colwick Road. Profits are fat and big profits.
And, amongst all of this helter-skelter to capture the moment, a tall, lean figure would soon be going about his business, which was scoring runs and saving a game for Essex or England. It’s what Alastair Cook has been doing for the past two decades, and it still brings him joy.
His batting today was far from flawless; he was caught in the slips twice before reaching 30, though neither opportunity was simple, and he appeared to be in a tangle when Liam Patterson-White bowled into the footholes. But he’s not out yet at 87, and if the work of rescuing the game hasn’t been done with ease, the loss of Nick Browne, leg before to Lyndon James, is the lone casualty.
Cook’s performance in the second innings was all the more impressive because he was less fluent today than he was on Thursday. Only 12 of his first 37 runs were boundaries, and two of them cover-driven fours off Dane Paterson sandwiched a scorching chance to second slip where Calvin Harrison couldn’t grab on with both hands above his head.
Other than that, there were the jabs down that resulted in Cook singles to backward point and the tiny deflections to the on side that resulted in a couple more. His sixth four, a drive through cover-point, gave him his 122nd first-class fifty, though it was only his third at Trent Bridge.
The achievement drew praise, but it was played against the gathering turmoil on Radcliffe Road, where another mob surged and boiled and readied for furious partisanship.
Alastair Cook, despite his ability to celebrate, is not a frantic person. Excite is a rare extravagance. He accepts the minor defeats that come with most long innings and is grateful that one of them does not send him back to the dugout.
In partnership with his skipper, Tom Westley, with whom he had put on an unbroken 137 by close of play, he wore out Nottinghamshire’s bowlers on the third evening of this encounter, exposing the inadequacies of his own side’s 298 in the first innings.
Steven Mullaney’s fielding became erratic and merely hopeful: two short-midwickets, one short-cover, and no slip to Westley, who completed the day with a nice unbeaten 70 of his own. Stuart Broad and Ben Hutton, two of their side’s strongest threats, bowled eight overs each.
It will take a lot for any team to win this game tomorrow, and there is no need for a gimmick finish. There is, however, a chance that Cook will make a century on this ground for the first time in his career. It will be yet another tick on a career record that is loaded with them.
And perhaps we had a sense of how things would unfold throughout a morning of quick appearances and freewheeling strokeplay, a strange antidote to everything Cook represents. Patterson-White batted for 51 minutes, the longest in Nottinghamshire’s order, before a crabbed poke, neither Catholic or Protestant, edged a catch to Simon Harmer at slip off Jamie Porter.
Jamie Harrison, on the other hand, struck seven different boundaries in his 36-ball 31 and everyone else showed willingness, particularly Stuart Broad, who swept Harmer towards West Bridgford for a six and a four before Matt Critchley picked up the final of his three cheap wickets.
Matthew Montgomery batted with the assurance of a man who glances up at the scoreboard before the game begins and sees three numbers against his name. Montgomery hit six more boundaries today before collapsing leg first while attempting to reverse-sweep a full-length ball from Critchley. He fell one short of his career high of 178, but one doubts he’ll need therapy.