A Test match for the ages

Readers of a certain vintage might be familiar with the work of J.A. (Charles) Cuddon, a teacher at Emanuel School in London and author of the Macmillan Dictionary of Sport and Games, which ran to some two million words of mostly exquisite prose. This is how he started his entry on cricket: ‘Cricket is a bat and ball game for 11 players, the object of which is to score more runs than the opposing team. Less prosaically it is the High Mass of sport, a sacrificial devotion to the gods of skill and chance, the most complete and arcane devotion yet devised by man.’

For anyone inclined to question that definition, the almost unbearably thrilling New Zealand-England Test match that finished in the small hours on Tuesday would have answered their doubts. England lost, but the game will be remembered for as long as people still talk about cricket.

Ben Stokes with his dizzying boldness on the field is emerging as England’s most successful captain since the great Arthur Shrewsbury in the late 1880s (rated by W.G.