I write at the end of a week in which Mike Gatting overslept in his hotel room and pleaded jet lag, in which England finally managed to overcome an Australian state side but there was nobody there to see it, when the Palmer Report on Cricket was discussed at the full winter meeting of the Test and County Cricket Board, and when Ian Botham's rib injury failed to respond to treatment in time for the third Test in Adelaide. Never let it be said that cricket writers are short of topics.

LRB 8 January 1987 | PDF Download