{"id":266339,"date":"2025-11-16T16:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T16:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/266339\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T16:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T16:31:09","slug":"we-wound-up-the-australians-at-trent-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/266339\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We wound up the Australians at Trent Bridge’"},"content":{"rendered":"

But it has not just been the bowling attacks that have performed at Trent Bridge, with some record run-scoring also being witnessed at the stadium.<\/p>\n

England’s men twice broke the world-record one-day match total, scoring 444 against Pakistan in 2016, and 481 against Australia two years later.<\/p>\n

It also witnessed England’s Bazball revolution – a more aggressive way of playing Test cricket – starting in earnest when the side chased down 299 in just 50 overs<\/a> to beat New Zealand in 2022.<\/p>\n

Mr Birks said another one of his favourite matches was the 1998 battle between the endurance of English batsman Michael Atherton and the hostile bowling of South African Allan Donald<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“After days like that it’s nice to go and watch some local cricket and sit in an empty field with no one around.<\/p>\n

“No one knows me and its lovely just to reflect on the day,” he said.<\/p>\n

As well as the quality of his pitches, Mr Birks has tried to influence games through less-than-subtle psychology, particularly against the Australian team.<\/p>\n

“We’ve wound them up sometimes,” he said, “really tried to get under their skin.<\/p>\n

“We told them the pitch isn’t that great and, especially when they had the great spinner Shane Warne, we said it wasn’t going to turn and he wasn’t going to get anything out of it.<\/p>\n

“And they bit a couple of times.”<\/p>\n

Mr Birks said he “hadn’t had a summer holiday in 40 years” and was now looking forward to travelling.<\/p>\n

“We love to walk and I’m not a great gardener, so there’s lots of places we want to visit,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But it has not just been the bowling attacks that have performed at Trent Bridge, with some record…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-266339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}