England v India: second one-day cricket international – live!

Cast your mind back three whole years. Try it. Hard eh? It’s almost impossible, unless you are a daily diarist a la Palin or Pepys, to remember what life was like back then, let alone try to recall one single day among all the others. This was pre-Covid, pre-non-fungible tokens, pre-Liz Truss idly flicking through wallpaper swatches for Downing Street …

But 14 July 2019 was one of those days that stands out above most, a summer rose poking above the garden wall. England won the (cricket) World Cup. At Lord’s, in front of a delirious crowd that had been treated to one of the most incredibly bonko games of cricket on record.

A game that chomped through huge moments like a teething toddler, spitting one out and discarding it for the next, over and over, until no one really knew what was going on.

Boult with the ball, Boult on the boundary rope, Buttler, Woakes, Plunkett, Archer, Rashid, Wood. STOKES. Jaw dropping sixes, cosmic deflections, run outs … Super Over? 15 runs. Jimmy Neesham – SIX! Jofra Archer, Martin Guptill Nasser Hussain, Ian Smith, Jason Roy, Jos Buttler. The barest of all margins.

Go on, treat yourself.

Not to be too overblown, but that game three years ago changed my life.

Cricket, just like life, marches on though. So we find ourselves here, at Lord’s, three years later. Players have come and gone, including the captain and mastermind of the 2019 campaign (and the years preceding) Eoin Morgan. He’s made the move up to the commentary box and his deputy Jos Buttler is the new man in charge.

England are stuttering slightly, after obliterating the Dutch in Amsterdam a few weeks ago they’ve been brought firmly back down to earth by Rohit Sharma’s India. A drubbing at the hands of Jasprit Bumrah’s bull-whip at the Oval a few days ago means that England have to win this match to keep this short series alive.

It is scorching in London, Lord’s is a picture. On we go.

Play will begin at 1pm (BST). I’ll be back with the teams and the toss very shortly.