This weekend Cardiff is a good venue for the oldest rockers in town. Last night, the Rolling Stones gracing the Principality Stadium, the rugby ground, and on Saturday half a mile down the road at Sophia Gardens, the cricket ground, there will be a full house to watch Liam Plunkett strut his stuff.
In cricketing terms, Plunkett can be regarded as a wonderful relic from the past still going strong. He first played ODI cricket for England in December 2005, against Pakistan, way before any of his current colleagues.
Marcus Trescothick was captaining the side, the IPL did not exist, nor did the ramp shot and 300 in 50 overs was a massive, match-winning score as was the case in Lahore on his debut.
It is to Plunkett’s credit that he is still going strong 13 years later. He will be playing his 68th ODI on Saturday so he has missed a lot along the way but he is as secure in the team now as he ever has been and he is more certain to be picked for England than his county, Yorkshire, who dropped him from their 50-over side last month. “I was disappointed to be dropped after one bad performance,” he said.
“This is the last year of my contract. I’ve had a chat with Martyn Moxon [Yorkshire’s director of cricket] and he’s not offered anything. I’ve got the right to speak to other counties and I’m looking to do that.”
It seems that Plunkett’s farewell tour is unlikely to be based at Headingley. When he talks of “a core group of players who have been together for a few years. It’s always good fun. You know each other inside out” he is talking about England rather than his current county.
At least he knows that he is appreciated by England – to the extent that they understand that he cannot change his wedding day, which now clashes with two ODI fixtures in Sri Lanka in October after a late change of schedule. More immediately, they keep picking Plunkett to bowl first change in one-day cricket.
They trust Plunkett. As with most of the pace bowlers in Eoin Morgan’s side it is probably his character rather than his ability to swing the ball around corners or bowl deceptive slower balls that endears him to his captain; Plunkett does not dabble with those ubiquitous slower balls until everything else has failed. Crucially, his head will still be high after some nasty batsman has swung his last delivery into the river, a key attribute for the modern ODI bowler. David Willey and Mark Wood keep bouncing back as well.
Plunkett is refreshingly down-to-earth and straightforward about his approach. “My strength is running in and hitting the pitch hard. When I was younger with England I used to stress a lot more and it didn’t help my performance at all.” Now he says: “I put my boots on and do my job.”
England and Plunkett will hope to repeat their bowling performance at the Oval when they play at the self-appointed “white-ball venue of choice”, which is now the aspiration of those in charge at Sophia Gardens. We all remember – with the possible exception of the chairman of the ECB – how Glamorgan received £2.5m as compensation for not bidding for a Test match this year. So Saturday’s fixture is important for them to demonstrate their ability to host ODI cricket.
The signs are good. All the tickets are sold. The pitch has a hint of green so it is less likely to be one of those old, brown surfaces that restricts the bounce and the ability of the batsmen to play their shots with abandon. The straight boundaries are short, which can make using two spinners a problem, but after the Oval England will surely play Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid.
Australia may well include D’Arcy Short, a vigorous opening batsman who has surfaced via T20 cricket, at the expense of one of their seamers. Their best batsman at the Oval was Glenn Maxwell, who said: “We couldn’t have batted much worse there but we still gave ourselves a chance at the end.”
Maxwell is hopeful of levelling the series here but, as they might hear down the road tonight, you can’t always get what you want.
England (probable): Roy, Bairstow, Hales, Root, Morgan, Buttler, Moeen Ali, Willey, Plunkett, Adil Rashid, Wood.
Australia (probable): Head, Short, Finch, Marsh, Stoinis, Maxwell, Paine, Agar, Neser, Tye, Stanlake.
