A tale of two Englands

At the same time as England’s rugby union players delivered a magnificent hearts-of-oak performance to humble a very good Irish side in Dublin, England’s cricketers were giving a very passable impression of what happens to a pile of balsa wood when stamped on by an elephant.

What happens next — especially looking ahead to the rugby and cricket World Cups later this year — is fascinating. The remaining Six Nations matches will show us whether Eddie Jones’s England, with the formidable help of the returning Vunipola brothers and Manu Tuilagi, will go to Japan at the end of the year as a supreme force. I think they will. As my Kiwi friend Angus said: ‘If they play like that, England will beat the All Blacks.’

Afterwards Jones said he was still short of ten first-choice players. Well, there’s nothing like keeping the team on their toes, and all that, but I’m not sure I can think of ten better players. The performance in Dublin was pretty close to perfection.

And that’s the fascinating thing about sport. What on earth happened there? How to explain such an unexpectedly stunning display? Selection, preparation and execution sure, but there’s an inexplicable chemistry which occurs on the pitch between the players — indeed, in the spaces between the players — that makes the crucial difference. It’s why we watch sport: you never know if it’s going to happen. But it’s been years since I have seen it work out so perfectly (and unexpectedly). Maybe England 5, Germany 1 in 2001 was the last time.

Meanwhile England’s one-day cricketers — who are led, oh irony, by a gritty Irishman — will demonstrate in the five one-day games and three T20s that follow the doomed Test series in the Caribbean whether we truly have renounced any pretensions to be a Test power in favour of becoming the masters of the grand old game’s vaudeville younger brother.