Chris Jordan: ‘Cricket during Covid isn’t as enjoyable, it’s unnatural’

The Twenty20 series against West Indies is a special one for Chris Jordan. The England seamer is back in Barbados where he was born and raised and surrounded by family and old friends. “The first thing I do when I get back here is go home, and as soon as I get there my mum or my dad will have something cooked up,” he says. “The second thing I do is go to the beach. I’ve got a particular beach, I really enjoy the vibe there, and I go straight there and take a dip. That’s literally the first things I do as soon as I land.”

But as Jordan revels in his return to this glorious, sun-kissed Caribbean island serious concerns are being raised about whether the 33-year-old still looks at home in England’s T20 side.

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His place in it has been a given for more than six years. When Jordan was rested for Wednesday’s defeat in Bridgetown it was only the third match he had missed since November 2015. But in recent months his death bowling has been regularly seized upon by critics and opposition batters – his final overs in the World Cup semi-final and in Sunday’s second T20 cost 23 and changed the momentum of the game.

“The reality of it is that as a team we probably haven’t excelled in that facet of the game for a little while,” Jordan says, “but in both those games it could have gone slightly different. If you look at it in black and white both overs went for big runs, but chances were created and at various points it could have been different. What I would say is I just try to keep my mindset as calm as possible in those situations and live with the results.”

Jordan suggests the only thing that has changed in his death bowling over his career is the number