There is a gripping piece of commentary in the peerless sports documentary 'When We Were Kings' when Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali's trainer, confesses that after the first round of the Rumble In The Jungle, Ali is forced to confront the nightmare that has come to visit him. For the first time, he found himself in the ring with a man he could not dominate, who was stronger than him, was not afraid of him, who could punch harder than him, and who was determined to knock him out. It was the only time that Dundee saw fear in Ali's eyes. Ali looked into himself as if into the eyes of his maker, summoned up every ounce of steel and nous he had, and figured out a way to beat George Foreman.
Sadly for England there will be no such redemption. The administrators have callously neglected red-ball cricket over the last 6 years and we must now suffer the consequences and the brutal spanking that is to come our way, not only over this summer but also in The Ashes. Ours has been a quite deliberate policy of hubristic self-sabotage and this will be our reckoning.
It matters not which team we pick for the remainder of the series - there are no stand-out alternatives to the existing squad and thanks to the utter joke of our domestic schedule, whoever comes in will not have played any red-ball cricket for 6 weeks. What's more, the poor sods will be thrown into the fire to contend with a hardened, rampant juggernaut. My heart goes out to Joe Root - a poor captain but a wonderful player and a fine and dignified man, undeserving of humiliation.
Rain saved us in the first test and if we can't win at Lord's after Root makes 180, Jimmy takes a first-innings five-fer, enjoying the best of the conditions and a seemingly impregnable position early on day 5, when Ashwin isn’t playing and when Kohli, Pujara, Rahane, Pant are yet to truly fire, then we are not going to beat India barring freak individual performances from Root/Anderson etc. India have England pinned to the ground and intend to spend the rest of the summer stomping all over us, much to their delight.
But at least we’ve got the multi-faceted entertainment package The Hundred to take our minds off the pain (they have DJs at every game!).
Assuming Wood and Woakes are injured, my selection for Leeds would be:
Burns
Hameed
Malan
Root
Bairstow
Ali
Buttler
Curran
Robinson
Mahmood
Anderson