2GS The Sunday Times May 1, 2022 19‘Though Native
Trail kept up,
the gap was still
three quarters of
a length at the line’Judd Trump breathed
a sigh of relief after
falling over the finish
line in a thrilling
semi-final against
Mark Williams at the
World Snooker
Championship at the
Crucible in Sheffield
(writes Hector Nunns).
Trump, 32, right,
looking for a second
world title, will face
Ronnie O’Sullivan in
the best-of-35 final
after he completed a
17-11 win over John
Higgins in the evening
session to remain on
course for a record-
equalling seventh title.The drama, though,
came in the afternoon
when Trump held off a
spirited fightback
from Williams.
Williams, 47,
and a three-
times world
champion,
was trying
to became
the oldest
player to
reach the final
since Ray Reardon
lost to Alex Higgins in
1982 at the age of 49
— but that looked a
distant dream when
he trailed 12-5 on
Friday. From there theWelshman produced a
superb performance,
taking the lead for the
first time at 16-15 only
for Trump to pull
level. Williams
then missed a
blue in the
decider and
Trump
closed it out
for a 17-16
victory.
“I had all my
luck in the last frame,
I was sort of going for
the cross-doubles but
there is luck there and
for two to go in, you
know it’s your day,”
Trump said.TRUMP TO FACE O’SULLIVAN IN WORLD FINAL
last horse to be loaded and when
the stalls snapped open both
Godolphin horses broke well. Doyle
was content to take his time on
Coroebus, Buick made his move a
little earlier.
It takes high-quality horses about
a minute and a half to race one
mile, so there was not much time
for dawdling.
As they reached that point on the
Rowley Mile where every horse gets
asked the ultimate question, it was
Coroebus and Native Trail who
powered to the front. Far apart at
the beginning, they found each
other a little over a furlong from the
winning post. From there, they
gave everything they had. Doyle
and Buick only had to ask and in the
decisive moment, a little over 200
metres from the line, Coroebus had
the greater acceleration.
He got a length on his stablemate
and though Native Trail kept up his
relentless gallop, the gap was still
three quarters of a length at the
line. Luxembourg was a good third
having lost a length or two after
getting a bump early in the race,
and the Aidan O’Brien horse will
now be prepared for the Epsom
Derby.
It was Appleby’s first victory in
the 2,000 Guineas and coming a
year after his second Epsom Derby,
he is building an impressive career.
Coroebus and Native Trail will add
further Group 1 victories to the
trainer’s record, though they will
be aimed at one-mile races rather
than the Derby’s mile and a half.After crossing the line, Doyle
allowed his horse to carry on up the
hill towards the golf club. Buick
understood what he needed to do
and slowly made his way up to his
understudy. Stretching his hand
towards Doyle, he said, “You
deserve that one.” This was no
throwaway remark but a man
knowing what the victory meant to
his friend.
They sit beside each other in the
weighing room, lean on each other
in bad times, and Buick knows all
about Doyle’s relationship with the
2,000 Guineas. Doyle might have
won in 2017 on Barney Roy and
should have won the 2014 running
on Kingman. Neither was his fault,
just other horses getting the run of
the race on the day.
“For once, I’m emotional,” said
Doyle when interviewed
afterwards, “this race has always
annoyed me.”
Well, that was until yesterday.right. I think it is ideal, but we’ll see.”
The case against is that a split didn’t
work when Flower, having previously
been in charge of everything for
almost four years, ran the Test set-up
while Giles was given responsibility
for the ODI and T20 sides. Flower
remained the dominant partner and
tended to get first call on multiformat
players, but his own position was
undermined by the simple fact that
his authoritarian style of manage-
ment lost its appeal when the players
were presented with an alternative in
Giles’s more relaxed approach.
The Flower-Giles experiment
foundered because the lines of
command were never properly
defined. And while Key would argue
that splitting the job attracts those
who might be unwilling to run the
England teams all year round, this
overlooks the number of good candi-
dates who will be put off precisely
because they would not be in com-
plete control, and possibly obliged to
work in tandem with someone whose
outlook differed from their own.
Seasoned coaches such as Justin
Langer and Tom Moody are against
sharing duties precisely because of
the blurred lines of authority, and
Giles himself as England’s director of
cricket before Key was firmly in favour
of one man doing everything — no
doubt partly in view of his own experi-
ences alongside Flower. Giles stuck to
this opinion right up to his departure
in February, even when the evidence
of Chris Silverwood’s three years as
England’s single head coach might
have persuaded him otherwise.
Since his own sacking, Silverwood
has been appointed head coach of Sri
Lanka, in which capacity he is in
charge of all three formats. A few
days after that move was
announced, Cricket Australia
confirmed that Andrew McDonald
was to succeed Langer as head
coach — and that he too would run
Tests, ODIs and T20s. CA said that
if McDonald needed a break he
would sit out the occasional white-
ball series — which is how most
countries, including England, have
traditionally sought to avoid burnout.
Key will make the final call on how
resources are allocated, but it is clear
that after years of neglect the Test
team is now to get priority. “You have
to make it clear — you might be the
white-ball coach but that does not
mean you are going to have the multi-
format cricketers every game,” he
said. “That’s not a bad thing because
there is a chance that we could sustain
the white-ball set-up for longer by
younger players coming in.
“For those multiformat cricketers, I
don’t think it will have a bearing on
how well they play in the T20 World
Cup if they have not played every
game in the lead-up. There will be
series in white-ball cricket where you
[are without] the absolute best XI.
What we have to concern ourselves
with is getting this Test team up and
running. That can go all the way
through to the end of the South Afri-
can series [in August-September].”
Do the two coaches have to get on?
“I suppose so, but I don’t know how
much they are going to see each
other,” Key said. “It might be like ships
passing in the night.”
The indications are, then, that the
white-ball coach will be very much the
junior partner, as was the case at the
time of Flower-Giles. What the white-
ball candidates must also accept is
that the short-form teams are led by a
strong captain in Eoin Morgan who
knows his own mind and may even get
to vet the shortlist of applicants.
“I’ve spoken to Morgs quite a bit
because no one better understands
that form of the game,” Key said. “He
knows a lot of the guys that have been
coaching in white-ball cricket, who
would be up for this job, so he is one of
the first ports of call.”
The deadline for applications is
Friday and interviews will take place
early next week. For that process, Key
will be joined by Tom Harrison, the
ECB chief executive, and Andrew
Strauss, chairman of the board’s
cricket committee. The chemistry
between the Test coach and Ben
Stokes, the new red-ball captain,
has got to be good, so he may
have some informal input.
Key says he is 70 per cent con-
fident of having a Test coach in
place in time for the first Test of
the summer, against New Zea-
land on June 2. Might one
coach still do everything?
“Yes, if that’s the best person,”
he said. “If we sit down and
think, ‘This bloke is unbeliev-
able’, and they are going, ‘I’m
only doing this if I am doing
the whole thing’, then that’s up
for debate. But it’s unlikely.”‘A number of good
candidates will be
put off because they
would not be in
complete control,
and possibly have to
work with someone
whose outlook
differed from theirs’Jos Buttler carried on his
stunning IPL form with 67 off
52 balls for Rajasthan Royals,
including four consecutive
sixes against Mumbai Indians.
The 31-year-old now has 566
runs across nine innings in the
competition, with three
hundreds, and is on course to
surpass Virat Kohli’s all-time
record of 973 runs in a season.
In the LV=County
Championship, Buttler’s
former county Somerset
sealed their first victory of the
season after enforcing the
follow-on against the
champions, Warwickshire,
and bowling them out for 167.
A hundred from Nick
Gubbins put Hampshire in the
driving seat against
Lancashire, setting them a
target of 351 on the final day.
James Anderson finished with
match figures of six for 60.
Nottinghamshire wrapped
up victory inside three days as
they successfully navigated a
tricky chase of 233 against
Worcestershire, with Stuart
Broad picking up five wickets
in the match. An unbeaten
half-century from Joe Clarke
guided the hosts home.
Kent will resume the final
day at Headingley still trailing
by 170 with eight second-
innings wickets remaining,after a fine 194 from Harry
Brook had given Yorkshire a
mammoth first-innings lead.
Gloucestershire piled on
the runs at Bristol in response
to Surrey’s 603, ending the
day on 443 for two, after a
296-run opening partnership
between Chris Dent (205 not
out) and Marcus Harris (124).
Northamptonshire were on
the losing end of the shortest
four-day match of the modern
era the last time they played
at Chelmsford. The game
finished half an hour into day
two. This time, they asked
Essex to follow on and will
hope to clinch a first victory of
the season today with Essex
149 for three, still 48 behind.
India’s Cheteshwar Pujara
(203) and Pakistan’s
Mohammed Rizwan (79) put
on 154 as Sussex built up a
huge first-innings lead at
Hove. Durham reached the
close without losing a wicket
although still needing 164 to
make Sussex bat again.
Marnus Labuschagne, the
Australia batsman, hit his first
century of the season for
Glamorgan at Derby.
Derbyshire will resume 139
ahead with eight wickets
intact. At Lord’s, Middlesex
beat Leicestershire by ten
wickets.BUTTLER IN HURRY TO SURPASS KOHLI
RECORD AFTER MORE IPL FIREWORKSDent progresses to a double century for GloucestershireDAN MULLAN/GETTY IMAGES