Quintin Jardine's blog

I have never been much good at sport, other than squash, and I was no better than average at that. But as a young journalist I did cover football for my paper. There I learned very quickly that as a local reporter it was my job to be partisan, and also that my press box companions from the nationals were a motley, cynical crew of which I had no wish to be part.

Looking back on them now I feel a fondness for them that was lacking at the time because at least they appreciated both sides of the game they were watching, sometimes through bleary eyes. It’s even stronger today as I contemplate the ongoing coverage of the England cricket tour of India, a nation of a billion people that has not lost more than one match in a series since Buddha was a novice.

If there is one word built into auto suggest in an English cricket journalist’s laptop it is this: woeful. Received wisdom in football is that you are only as good as your last game. Among the sneering hacks who follow Stokes’s side, most of them ex players who never scaled great heights, you are only as good as your current innings.

I accept that these people have a role as critics as well as reporters of the facts, but criticism is invalid when it comes from people who are incapable of acknowledging and factoring in the possibility that the opposition might actually be very good, and on that day might have played out of their skins.