England’s not outs are Ben Foakes at 11* and Ollie Robinson, who had a great day with the ball in taking five-fer, at 3*. England are pretty good with this formation, and they only have Jack Leach and James Anderson coming on. All eyes will be on Foakes next as he tries to make the team into something of a whole. With football having taken the tough – and in the case of the grassroots game, strange – decision to cancel all matches this weekend, much attention has been paid to events in South London. Cricket was yesterday showered with tributes to the late monarch. and Oliver Brown was there to see that. “It was as hauntingly beautiful a moment as any sporting crowd had imagined. For three and a half minutes, ending only with the tolling of a ship’s bell from HMS Illustrious, 27,000 people inside the Oval joined in exquisite silence. Only the faint hum of industrial machinery, far off the ground, broke the sense of the dreamer. So much for the tortured debate about whether sport could muster the decency to reflect this time of national mourning. The cricket fans gathered here under the bright September skies were as peaceful and as polite as a congregation in St Paul’s Cathedral. Some spectators in the Vauxhall End wiped away tears. Ben Stokes, the England captain, stood with his head down, biting his lip. And when it came for his players to sing God Save the King, the first national team to do so in the reign of Charles III, the anthem, led by soprano Laura Wright, echoed in all corners of that ground as a planetary elegy”.
