It would have been the pounding blood in his head that disoriented Haseeb Hameed most, even more than the shock of being bowled for a first-ball duck at Lord’s – deeply personal though that quick, straight ball would have felt.
Cricket can be brutal. For six years Hameed has been dreaming of returning to the Test arena, a place where he looked entirely at home until fate struck with a broken hand. As a legacy of that injury his fingers were bandaged while in the field at Lord’s, though no amount of field dressings could make up for the hurt he suffered from failing so graphically on such a...