Cancel Christmas

Never before in the history of Test cricket has a team declared in the first innings with so many runs on the board and gone on to lose.

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Maudlin doesn't begin to cover it, but as England contrive to record literally the most extreme example of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in the history of the sport, we can finally see that last summer was indeed a glorious freak, and once more sink back into the familiar arms of the kind of epic failure that has been our faithful companion for most of our cricketing lifetimes.