He is Mint

Here's me wondering why Ben is playing #44 for Durham

That's not his shirt.

It's Ben Raine's shirt 😂

Ben cannot fathom why Joe could ever be jealous; Ben is the one lucky enough Joe loves him why the fuck would he risk losing that?

@openbookish YOU WEREN’T GOING MAD!

I FOUND THE FUCKING CLIP ABOUT JOE AND JIMMY AND WIMBLEDON AND THE PIMMS

I cannot remember who asked for this but I have been SEARCHING because I knew it existed!

Meaning that the ECB didn’t announce early to stop the leak, they always intended to announce McCullum’s sacking in the middle of the women’s Test.

Fuckers. Way to show the women’s game any sort of respect after announcements all summer have overshadowed it.

Still not sure why Nat chose to bowl first, and that’ll be a big talking point in the analysis, but I’ve been so impressed with how the India players took to batting. Smriti was outstanding and very much deserved a century for her innings, massive big up to Yastika as the only batter on the honours board from the test.

England had some stand out performances - both Sophie and Amy had really good games - but really showing the lack of long format cricket the women have. If we wanna show up in this format we have to play more test and I really hope that that is the outcome of this Test for England. Test is still the best format of the game and I’d absolutely love to see more of it - plus how inspiring for young players to know that they can play Test like the men of there was a county test competition for the women?

And the ECB have now publicly backed him in the long run.

He will be the primary decision maker for the next coach.

I have mentioned this, but I don’t like this timeline. Can I swap with another version of me on another timeline please?

Trust does not fail under a single overwhelming load. It fails through the slow exhaustion of its fatigue life. Every material possesses a finite number of cycles it can withstand before microscopic dislocations coalesce into rupture. A bridge girder stressed repeatedly well below its ultimate strength will one day fracture without drama. The final truck is rarely heavier than the thousands that crossed before it. The difference is that the metal has already surrendered its remaining life. Human trust follows the same invisible accounting. The small inconsistencies, the postponed apologies, the careless handling of confidences do not break the bond in isolation. They steadily consume its endurance until the structure can no longer tolerate even ordinary weight.

Stress concentration reveals the terrifying leverage of minor flaws. A surface imperfection no deeper than a scratch can multiply local forces by factors of three or ten. The bulk of the material remains untroubled while the flaw bears catastrophic intensity. In relationships these concentrators form wherever attention slips or respect is applied unevenly: a repeated dismissal of a fear, a confidence shared without permission, an emotional absence papered over with routine. The surrounding love may feel intact, yet at that precise point the forces have already escalated beyond what the material was designed to bear. The damage accelerates not because the injury is large, but because the geometry of the flaw turns ordinary stress into something lethal.

Fracture toughness determines why identical injuries destroy some bonds and leave others scarred but functional. Ductile materials absorb energy through plastic deformation, blunting the crack tip and redistributing strain. Brittle ones release suddenly once a critical length is reached. Trust varies in the same way. Some relationships possess an innate microstructure of forgiveness and recalibration that allows them to deform without shattering. Others, built on rigid ideals of perfection, propagate the smallest fissure into total separation. The governing variable is not the depth of initial love but the hidden capacity to blunt and redirect the advancing fracture.

Even the strongest designs incorporate mechanisms that arrest propagating cracks. Layers that force a fracture to change direction, fibers that bridge gaps, joints engineered to yield in controlled ways rather than catastrophically. In living trust these arresters emerge as precise patterns of repair: the ability to name damage without triggering defense, the practiced return to shared ground after rupture, the deliberate reinforcement of continuity where it has been severed. Their presence does not prevent injury. It prevents the injury from becoming destiny.

Ahh yes, because the issue with our ON FIELD performance is all down to how much England have been drinking.

Nothing to do with the management style or the one-dimensional messaging from the coach.

The fact they’ve been drinking.

So these are all “guidelines” not new rules - it’s all advice for the players to follow.

A few very concerning standouts:

1 - “this includes not drinking alcohol on the day before…” <- still fathoms me professional paid athletes couldn’t work this one out themselves

2 - “if players choose to drink in the period before, during or after matches it should not be in public” <- what the actual fuck???? Is the messaging really “feel free to drink before/during a match, just don’t be seen to be doing it”???????

3 - “a midnight curfew is also in place on every day of a series at home or on tour” <- so we get a ten day gap between Tests, the players have gone home to be with their families and loved one and they STILL have to adhere to the curfew???

This is so fucked and so directly opposite what they should have done in the fallout of the New Zealand series that I’m more convinced we’ll lose 0-3 to Pakistan next month.

It's got a green strap.

No. No stop it.

What a captain, what a player, what a man