Why Owen Farrell is NOT a silver bullet who can win Tests for the Lions - this is what he brings instead, writes DAN BIGGAR
I told him the Lions wouldn't have been scared of the team Australia named last week. You need a fear factor. That often stems from the forwards but for me the half-backs was the biggest difference.
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The Guardian
9 minutes ago
- The Guardian
'It means the world': Maro Itoje on British & Irish Lions series win
The British & Irish Lions claimed a 29-26 victory and series win over Australia after a late try from Hugo Keenan on Saturday. At one stage the Lions were trailing 23-5, stunned by three Wallaby tries inside nine minutes but the Lions responded with five tries of their own to complete a dramatic comeback. It is the first time the Lions have won the first two tests of a series in 28 years, and secures their first series win in 12 years. Maro Itoje, the Lions captain, hailed a 'massive squad effort' after the game. 'I'm delighted, it's what dreams are made of.' The Lions head coach, Andy Farrell, said: 'If you're a child watching that back home, do you want to be a British and Irish Lion? One hundred percent.'
Telegraph
39 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Kevin Pietersen is wrong to say batting was harder 20 years ago
Kevin Pietersen did not often bowl, although he first came to English attention when he represented KwaZulu Natal as an off-spinner on England's 1999-2000 tour of South Africa, but he has delivered some bouncers at Joe Root. Root in the course of his 150 at Old Trafford rose to second place in the all-time list of Test run-scorers. But this was not enough to impress Pietersen. Far from it. He declared, like a real old-timer, that batting was twice as hard back in his day. 'Don't shout at me but batting these days is way easier than 20/25 years ago!' Pietersen posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. 'Probably twice as hard back then.' Pietersen names 22 bowlers of his time and dares the cricket follower of today to name 10 bowlers to compare with them. Of his contemporaries, he nominates four Australians: Glenn McGrath, Brett Lee, Jason Gillespie and Shane Warne; four Pakistanis in Waqar Younis, Shoaib Akhtar, Wasim Akram and Mushtaq Ahmed; three Indians in Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath and Harbhajan Singh; three New Zealanders in Shane Bond, Chris Cairns and Daniel Vettori; three South Africans in Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock and, bizarrely, Lance Klusener but not Dale Steyn; two Sri Lankans in Chaminda Vaas and Muttiah Muralitharan; and two West Indians in Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh. A single England bowler was nominated by Pietersen in Darren Gough. His colleagues in the Ashes-winning attack of 2005 seem not to have impressed him. Most of the variable factors in Test cricket have changed little in this century: balls, pitches, DRS and so forth. The biggest change has been the impact of T20 – the first professional T20 tournament was started in England in 2003, by when Pietersen was starting out for Nottinghamshire. My interpretation, therefore, would be that Pietersen is wrong to say that the standard of pace bowling has gone down. The finest seamers today are a match for their equivalents of '20/25 years ago'. Don't shout at me but batting these days is way easier than 20/25 years ago! Probably twice as hard back then! Waqar, Shoaib, Akram, Mushtaq, Kumble, Srinath, Harbhajan, Donald, Pollock, Klusener, Gough, McGrath, Lee, Warne, Gillespie, Bond, Vettori, Cairns, Vaas, Murali,… — Kevin Pietersen🦏 (@KP24) July 26, 2025 'Please name me ten modern bowlers that can compare to the names above,' Pietersen goes on to say. Well, in that case, Australia's Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon can all compare; South Africa's Kagiso Rabada is up with his forebears, not bowling so fast but moving the ball more; Mark Wood and Jofra Archer have been timed as England's quickest ever; New Zealand's Will O'Rourke is a serious customer, as is Jayden Seales, even if West Indies are nowhere near what they were; while a case for Jasprit Bumrah being rated the best of all time has been made, although he has been down on pace in the Old Trafford Test. Where Pietersen is right, although he does not spell it out, is that the standard of finger-spin bowling in Test cricket has decreased, while that of wrist-spin has plummeted. And this is where T20 must have had its impact: spinners bowl a higher percentage of the overs in a T20 game than they do in a red-ball or Test match, but it is a different sort of spin: fired in, flat, at the batsman's legs, denying him room. It is a distant relation of flight and dip and turn and defeating the batsman past either inside or outside edge. The presence of finger-spinners in international cricket has faded. If the Test match is in Asia, they will have their say all right, but elsewhere? New Zealand and West Indies might not select one at home. Pakistan, to defeat England last autumn, had to dust down a couple of veterans. It is Lyon and South Africa's Keshav Maharaj who keep this show on the road outside Asia. Of wrist-spinners, Pietersen had to face Warne, Kumble and Mushtaq, and he might have added Yasir Shah who took five wickets per Test for Pakistan. Their successors are not visible, in England or anywhere else: India do not select Kuldeep Yadav, and while Afghanistan have Rashid Khan, they have been able to play only 11 Tests. England have been as culpable as any country in allowing spin to decline, whether in the county championship or the national side, and especially wrist-spin. In almost 150 years of Test cricket only one wrist-spinner has taken a hundred Test wickets for England, Doug Wright, and only one other has managed 50 wickets, Adil Rashid.
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Much to our surprise, Lions' win was one of greatest Tests of all time
The official attendance here at the MCG was 90,307 and it was fitting that it should have been a record crowd. Yet actually it was a shame the other 9,717 seats were empty because you just want everyone in the world to get to experience a game like this. You never know when it's coming. You certainly wouldn't have known after the first Test the week before. You might reasonably have thought this was something of a humdrum Lions tour. But then, there we were in this magnificent iconic venue and suddenly, bang, there ignited one of the greatest matches of all. Maybe it was something to do with the MCG. Maybe it was the fury of the downtrodden Wallabies because they flew out of the blocks with a venom and passion that was magnificent. And maybe it took the Lions to play like pussy cats for the first half hour — because the thrill was the thrill of the chase. Yet this was scintillating, loud and riveting but not just at the end with the clock running down and the Lions running out of time, it was like that all the way through. Eleven minutes to go and the stadium announcer tried to raise the voices of the local support. 'Wallabies fans have gone a bit quiet!' he said. And no they hadn't, but you could perhaps forgive the volume dropping slightly when the game was right on the edge and hearts were in mouths. Yet all he achieved was to trigger more tumultuous choruses of 'Lions! Lions!' No, it's not a very clever chant, but that doesn't matter when it's countdown to kick-off and the MCG is throbbing to the sound of it. Half an hour in and Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii rips open the Lions' defence, putting Tom Wright through for what is, so far at least, the try of the series, and there it is again: that Lions chant, loud and demanding, beseeching a reaction — something, anything. The Lions are being cut to shreds here, they're yielding to the awesome giant Will Skelton, they're dropping balls and losing their heads, yet somehow in this maelstrom of noise and physical assault they put their foot on the ball and they achieve briefly the clarity of thought that enables them to get a foot back in the game. And therein they started to mount the comeback that became the narrative of the incredible occasion. At some later point, after decent pause for the necessary reflection, we might be able to place this Melbourne Test in its rightful position amongst the greatest of all rugby matches. Top ten? I don't know right now but my mind went to the 1999 World Cup semi-finals and France coming back to stun the All Blacks at Twickenham. The All Blacks, there, ran up a 24-10 lead. The Wallabies' lead here was four points greater. France, on that occasion, were the outsiders, so their miracle uprising was less expected. The Lions, here, just were desperately searching for the opportunity to assert some dominance and quality and yet they were simultaneously charging around, putting out Wallaby fires: Jack Conan: 24 tackles, Maro Itoje 20, Tom Curry 15 in just 55 minutes, the 15th of those being the one on Suaalii that stopped a fourth Australia try that would have made the deficit surely too much to chase. In that 1999 semi, France just flew past the All Blacks who couldn't believe what was happening. The Lions, here, had to scrap for every inch and, with the seconds ticking, were like a boxer still needing a final-round knock-out. Thus we had the knife-edge finish, the Lions somehow keeping their heads when the entire crowd were losing theirs, Finn Russell marshalling the team with an extraordinarily calm intelligence until finally the defence was dragged far enough one way for Hugo Keenan to find the smallest chink of light the other. Cue vast explosions of joy. From the fuzzy aftermath, a few images stand out: the tightness of the hugs with which every team-mate greeted Jac Morgan; Maro Itoje on a slow lap, high-fiving an entire MCG perimeter's worth of euphoric outstretched hands; Henry Pollock, baseball cap on back-to-front, a kid with no regard for the seniors, whose exuberance was so unchained that he wouldn't leave Johnny Sexton alone, squeezing his face and over-hugging him to an extent that Sexton just did not know what to do. Another was Owen Farrell, sharing a perimeter lap with his young son: celebrating with the crowd, signing jerseys, high-fiving hands, sharing his joy in a way that we are not accustomed to seeing from him. On this tour, he really does seem to be a different man. Afterwards, in the press conference, Andy Farrell, the head coach, described it all as 'a fairytale' and Itoje, his captain next to him, said 'this is what dreams are made of'. But Itoje struggled to contain his grin because the press conference room was right next to the Lions' changing room from where his team-mates were blasting out their bespoke version of 'Rockin' All Over the World' with lyrics rewritten by Fin Smith and 'Biz Faz' and 'Captain Maro' references peppered through the choruses. Farrell and Itoje were followed into the press room by Joe Schmidt, the Wallabies coach, and his captain Harry Wilson and you had to feel for them because as they attempted to deal with the inquest and as Wilson attempted to choke back his tears, the riotous chorus next door moved through the Lions' playlist, from Sweet Caroline to Robbie Williams to The Pogues. The contrast, of course, was vast: two teams at polar opposite ends of the emotional spectrum but separated only by a controversial refereeing decision in the last seconds of the match. Yet this was a game where one team so badly needed the other. The Wallabies needed the Lions to trigger a performance which earned them the respect that they had been denied. The Lions needed that huge Wallabies performance to give their achievements the credibility that they have been seeking. No one can say now that this was not a proper victory earned by properly tested Lions. Together, then, they contrived to produce one of the greatest rugby contests, so special, you wish the whole world could have been here to share it.
