In what marketing types like to call an “achingly hip” part of east London, where all ten captains gathered for a pre-World Cup publicity event, Virat Kohli touched upon the essential question for the next seven weeks. “England seem obsessed with getting to 500 before anyone else and there is a lot of talk about someone doing it at this tournament,” the India captain said, before adding a critical rider: “But at a World Cup, things are totally different. As the tournament goes on, scoring will become harder.”He is right, but not necessarily for the reason he stated which, he argued, will be because the pitches will become more worn as the tournament progresses, and therefore harder to bat on. That was true two…

Source: The Times May 29, 2019 16:07 UTC