Tuesday 12th May 2026
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Oxford professor banned from driving after hitting child

Abby Ridsdill-Smith
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Oxford professor banned from driving after hitting child

A 97-year-old Oxford professor and war veteran who hit a nine-year-old child after running a red light on Botley Road has been let off with a fine.

Tony Honoré, a law professor and honorary fellow at All-Souls College, denied charges of dangerous driving but was found guilty in his absence at the Oxford Magistrate’s Court on Friday.

Honoré was charged with a £750 fine and a twelve month ban from driving for the offence. The court heard that the nine-year-old, Ragnar Cadogan, did not sustain serious injuries from February’s accident and has since made a full recovery.

Honoré failed a roadside eyesight test after officers arrived on the scene.

Finding him guilty of dangerous driving, District Judge Malcolm Dodds said: “There is no dispute that a red light was clearly displayed and there is no dispute that there are pedestrians crossing on a red light.

“The accident speaks for itself. That is powerful evidence of dangerous driving because how on earth could a reasonable, competent and careful driver travelling down Botley Road not be really obviously aware of a pedestrian crossing, pedestrians on the crossing and the red light?

“This isn’t a case of ‘oops, oh dear’, using the brakes and coming to a stop: he carries on for quite a period of time and what appears to be a state of oblivion as to what is going on.

“That is incredibly powerful evidence to a driver falling well below the standard of what is expected of a careful and competent driver.”

In mitigation, Honoré’s defense counsel said that the accident had taken a heavy toll on the professor, who said it was “the worst thing that happened to him in his life.”

Dodds added: “He said this was worse than the injury he suffered in the war [during the Battle of El Alamein, 1942].

“There aren’t many people left who fought in the Second World War and I suspect he is one of the very few survivors of that battle.

“The accident was terribly traumatic for [Ragnar’s mother] and the only good thing is that Ragnar suffered miraculously few injuries.”

Cherwell has contacted Tony Honoré for comment.

Living wage ‘Norrington Table’ launched

Greg Ritchie
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Living wage ‘Norrington Table’ launched

The Oxford University Living Wage Campaign has launched a ‘Living Wage Norrington Table’, to highlight the “underpaid workers whose labour our university lives rely on”.

The table ranks each college and Permanent Private Hall (PPH) by a range of factors, including base pay rate, job security, and bonuses.

It reveals that six colleges are known to not be paying the Living Wage at the time data was received. Meanwhile, as Cherwell confirmed last term, no colleges pay the Oxford Living Wage, which accounts for the higher living costs in the city and is used by Oxford City Council.

In establishing a ranking of colleges, the campaign first used the set of data was the lowest hourly wage paid to college staff in the previous financial year, and the number of staff paid below the current Living Wage as calculated by the Living Wage Foundation in November each year.

They then factored in the payment of bonuses and the use of perks or incentives. These can help alleviate some of the problems with low pay, with bonuses often being paid at periods in the year associated with high cost pressures such as Christmas and the summer period.

Keble is the highest ranked college, finishing third-placed overall behind PPHs Campion Hall and Blackfriar’s. Surprisingly, however, they are not one of the thirteen colleges accredited to the Living Wage foundation as National Living Wage employers.

A Keble spokesperson told Cherwell: “We intend to pay at least the Living Wage but we do not think that, as Trustees of a Charity, we should be devolving any responsibility to pay and benefits to a third party.”

According to the table, six colleges are not paying the national Living Wage at the time data was received.Two colleges – Harris Manchester and St John’s – intend to implement the wage in May and August respectively.

Meanwhile, Wycliffe Hall and Wolfson have registered non-payment of the National Living Wage but did not reveal current wage rates.

Finally, Magdalen and St Catherine’s did not submit sufficient data, with the campaign using figures from previous years to provide estimates of current base rates.

Outgoing chair of the campaign, Jacob Armstrong, told Cherwell: “The Norrington Table reflects the hard work of students and teaching staff across the university, but often we forget the underpaid workers whose labour our university lives rely on.

“The Living Wage Campaign wants to change that. We have collected data on wages and conditions across colleges and private halls in the university since our inception, and decided to undertake the ambitious task of producing a comparable table based upon base wage rates across our constituent colleges and halls as they stand in 2018.

“A new conversation is desperately needed to address the lack of fair and proportionate wages for non-academic staff, particularly after the City Council has shown such leadership in its recent consultation on the Oxford Living Wage for its employees.”

The Oxford University Living Wage Campaign was founded in 2013 by Oxford students to campaign for a Living Wage for all staff within the university and its constituent colleges.

In 2015, the campaign was successful in lobbying the university to pursue accreditation to the National Living Wage as set by the Living Wage Foundation, currently set at £8.75/hr.

Travesties Preview – ‘I have never felt so threatened by a teacup’

Isabella Welch
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Travesties Preview – ‘I have never felt so threatened by a teacup’

Seeking a way to explain Dada, Henry Carr (Lee Simmonds) sways from side to side, leading with a shaking, pointed finger, somehow so uncertain and yet so smooth. Behind him, an enigmatic ensemble cast sharply punctuate his every word: his every thought of the past is given physical form. In a sense, the whole play is only the physical form of Henry Carr’s vague inklings, but this decision to use the ensemble to place every thought under a microscopic lens makes the impossible density of Stoppard’s witty script a little less impossible to comprehend.

Talking to director Bea Udale-Smith after the preview, she told us that this production of Travesties would be a walk away from the often middle-aged, middle-class demographic of Stoppard through the use of a more visual style. I agreed when she said that productions of Stoppard often rely on the wit of the writing, and play up the characters’ intellect to the point where references are often lost. I’ve studied Stoppard for my degree, but I feel seeing this production of Travesties directed with this unique attitude could help me more in solidifying my understanding of the play than heaps of literary criticism might.

I was moved when Bea explained her interpretation of the concept of probability in Stoppard. The play emphasises the vast coincidence that Lenin, Joyce and Tristan Tzara were all in Zurich, using the same library, for a small period of time in 1917, and whenever Carr is asked why he doesn’t worry about Lenin’s revolution, the response is ‘a million to one’ that he will succeed. Similarly, Carr criticises Tzara and Joyce with my favourite line in the play: “For every thousand people, there are nine hundred doing work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard who’s the artist.”

Carr presents these characters as individuals who have fallen through the cosmic gaps – they’ve no right to have become so famous in the first place, let alone all be together. Bea said that this was part of Carr’s great tragedy – he watched not only one but three people whom he hated become the fathers of the modern age, while he was never remembered (before I read the play, as you probably do now, I had no idea who Henry Carr was). I could see this deep regret in Lee Simmonds’ performance – as Henry Carr makes up unreliable tableaus before the audience of what his youth was like, making up a new personality and attitude for himself every time, there is a melancholy behind it all. A grim smile here, a slight hesitation, the sense that at any moment Carr’s old-age depression could break through the facade of his young life.

Bea also showed us a scene from one of the sections of the play modelled after The Importance of Being Earnest. I have never felt so threatened by a teacup as when watching Gwendolen (Olivia White) aggressively drive Cecily (Emma Howlett) through an afternoon tea told entirely in rhyme. The rhyme of the scene, combined with the elements taken from the playground of Wilde’s absurd, epigrammatic parallel world really gave the impression that the artificiality of the play (and thus Carr’s imagination) reached an exponential crescendo towards the end. When Bea said that she only directed one scene as entirely real, entirely genuine, it made me excited to see what she interprets as the one truth of Travesties. Stoppard has said in interviews about Travesties that “I do not think it tells the truth,” and as a play full of lies and fictions, that one truthful scene will mean the world.

Tristan Tzara is possibly my favourite character in any Stoppard play, and though I didn’t get the chance to see Julia Pilkington playing him, I look forward to see what a production with such emphasis on choreography could do with him. Tzara is flamboyant, destructive, and misanthropic – if Lee Simmonds could cause carnage on the stage with nothing but a cheese sandwich, I can’t wait to see what a wild nihilist with a death wish for all art can do.

As with most Stoppard plays, Travesties is a literature or history nerd’s dream play, but I think that the absurdist comedy that clashes with its haunting melancholy makes it a play that anyone could enjoy, so I encourage everyone to go and see it in second week!

Resignation forces Union reshuffle

Greg Ritchie
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Resignation forces Union reshuffle

The elected secretary of the Oxford Union has resigned from his position, prompting a series of changes in the society’s hierarchy.

Shanuk Mediwaka resigned from the role on Sunday with immediate effect for personal reasons.

Brendan McGrath, who was elected as a candidate for Standing Committee, will replace Shanuk as secretary, as per rule 38.

It is understood Cecilia Zhao, as the Standing Committee candidate to win the most votes, was given first refusal for the promotion, but chose to waive the offer allowing second-placed McGrath to step in. Zhao has been contacted for comment.

Meanwhile, Maxim Parr-Reid – who narrowly missed out on a place in Standing Committee in last term’s elections – will fill the vacated slot of McGrath.

The Union declined to comment.

Oxfess and Oxlove admins take pages offline after abuse

Matthew Roller
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Oxfess and Oxlove admins take pages offline after abuse

The admins of Facebook pages Oxfess and Oxlove have taken the pages down after targeted anonymous submissions about them.

The pages – who are administered by the same team – had grown hugely in popularity since their inception last year. The Oxlove page had over 9,000 likes on Facebook, with Oxfess having around 10,500.

However, they were both taken down from Facebook on Tuesday afternoon following a set of abusive submissions.

One of the admins told Cherwell: “I’m not sure if Oxlove and Oxfess are returning – there were submissions targeting me and the other admin about our roles on the page in a particularly nasty way.

“We run Oxlove and Oxfess in a way that we think improves the Oxford community as a place to spread the love and discuss problems with the institutions anonymously, taking up quite a lot of time.

“We are much less willing to that if we get lots of anonymous attacks on our positions as admins.”

Oxlove, which was created last year following the success of Cambridge-based page Crushbridge, allowed students to anonymously submit posts declaring their love for other students.

A few weeks after Oxlove’s inception, the admins created Oxfess, which received widespread attention and praise after lifting the lid on student mental health in an unexpected way.

Both pages received between 150 and 200 submissions a day, and had a post reach of between 100,000 and 200,000 views per week.

In a June 2017 interview with Cherwell, one of the pages’ admins said: “I realised there would be some mental health stuff [on Oxfess], but I didn’t realise the extent to which it would be the case.

“It’s nice that people feel that there’s a place to talk about these things.”

Oxford’s third major anonymous submissions page, Oxfeud, has been inactive since January, after receiving constant criticism for allegedly providing a platform for hate speech.

Oxford beaten in uni ranking by Cambridge for eighth year running

Fred Dimbleby
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Oxford beaten in uni ranking by Cambridge for eighth year running

Oxford was beaten by Cambridge for the eighth year in a row in the Complete University Guide 2019.

Cambridge topped the rankings with Loughborough, UCL, Warwick, and Durham also appearing in the top ten.

The guide ranks universities by their entry standards, student satisfaction, research quality, and graduate prospects.

Chairman of The Complete University Guide, Dr Bernard Kingston, told Metro: “It is a fact that Cambridge and Oxford have usually topped the table.

“But some 20 British universities could be regarded as top world-class institutions – some ancient like Cambridge and Oxford, and some modern like Warwick and Lancaster. All are able to attract faculty and research funding globally.

“This clearly influences the quality of their undergraduate teaching and enables them to recruit high-quality students.

https://www.datawrapper.de/_/Ng2z5/

“All universities strive for continual improvement, and it is conceivable that in the future others may pose a challenge to Cambridge and Oxford.”

Cambridge have topped the table for eight years in a row

The list ranks 131 universities and is updated annually but Cambridge and Oxford have occupied the two top spaces since 2014. The last time Oxford topped the table was in 2011.

LSE, Imperial, and St Andrews took the rest of the places in the top five.

Neither Oxford or Cambridge had a score for Student satisfaction after boycotts rendered the results of the National Student Survey (NSS) unusable.

Staffordshire university climbed the most places since last year’s Guide, rising by 32 places to 72nd.

An interview with Bea Udale-Smith

Cherwell Stage
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An interview with Bea Udale-Smith

How does it feel to be directing an adaptation of a play by such a renowned living playwright?

It feels very exciting, and surprisingly not as frightening as I thought it would be! We were lucky enough to be introduced to Stoppard the week after we got our slot at the Playhouse, after his second talk at St Catherine’s in Michaelmas Term, and the very first thing he said when I told him about our production was that the trick to doing Travesties was to have fun with it. So I’ve very much felt able to take liberties and make Travesties our own!

Why Travesties, and are there any themes you think are particularly resonant at the moment?

I was set on putting on a Stoppard from the moment I found out he was Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor at our college for this year. I re-read many of his works, but Travesties stood out to me, since it very much felt like it had the most scope to be played with, as the whole play is set in the mind of its slightly forgetful narrator, Henry Carr (performed, in our version, by the incredible Lee Simmonds). This gives way to many moments of overt-theatricality, which has allowed us to introduce a physical theatre ensemble (Laura Henderson Child, Martha Harlan, Tom Mackie), who control the action and physically represent Carr’s mind. Thematically, I also think Travesties is fascinating in terms of its discussions on the value of art, which is pretty much always relevant, but especially so right now as arts funding, and particularly arts education, is so under threat!

What is special about your interpretation of ‘Travesties’?

Travesties is very much a play where every production is wildly different, but our interpretation has a couple of very obvious changes. Stoppard often shifts the genre, style, and characterisation in his play – and, since one thing past productions of Travesties have often been criticised for is not making these shifts clear enough, we’ve added a couple of explicit (and fun!) motifs to highlight them.

As well as adding an ensemble, another key change is that we’ve cast Joyce and Tzara with female actors. The one problem I had with Travesties was how few female parts there were, but we felt able to cast these two with female actors, as the James Joyce and Tristan Tzara of the play are very much creations of Carr’s mind, rather than the actual historical figures! This also means our production has been able to be in keeping with the Playhouse’s 100 Years of Women’s Suffrage (‘A Vote of Her Own’) season, which is a really incredible thing to be a part of.

What has been the most challenging aspect of directing this play?

One of the most challenging parts has probably been trying to find the right tone for each scene or section. As this play has many absurd moments each written in an extremely different manner, and even the “normal” moments usually need to be delivered in a highly stylised way, we’ve had to settle on a very specific style for each of them – which needs to work perfectly for that moment, work with the moments before, and also be very funny! So just the initial aim of trying to crack each scene has been difficult.

Do you have any favourite scenes?

The play has some really fabulous scenes, such as the scene in which all the characters on stage start speaking in limericks. Scenes like this are so much fun as soon as you read them, so they actually need a lot less work.

My favourites are probably the ones which we’ve really had to work on, such as the first proper scene in Carr’s story, where Carr’s memory keeps going wrong and the scene re-sets each time it does. We spent a while working on this scene and giving Carr and his butler, Bennett (Jon Berry), different characters for each re-set, and its become one of my absolute favourites.

Out of Lenin, Joyce and Tzara, who would you most like to meet?

After directing this play, definitely Tristan Tzara. This is mostly because Stoppard seems to have taken the most liberty with his character, making him into a figure straight out of The Importance of Being Earnest – while still espousing Dadaist views… and it would be very interesting to see what the real Tzara was like!

You’ve done some acting yourself. How do you bring your acting experience into your directing?

I think acting under a variety of directors is really useful in knowing which directing styles work and which don’t. You can then use/nick when directing whatever techniques helped you when you were acting… and it means you don’t lose awareness of how hard the things you ask people to do sometimes are!

What’s been the best part of directing this play?

The best part has definitely been all the moments where we’ve finally cracked the difficult scenes. Julia Pilkington, who’s playing Tzara, pointed out yesterday that in this play quite a few scenes don’t make any sense, until we make them make no sense at all – at which point they make perfect sense! The moment scenes move from ‘almost there’ to ‘there’ is brilliant – and a scene we’ve been struggling with for days suddenly become hilarious!

What advice would you give to those looking to get into directing in Oxford drama? Did you find it difficult to get started? What do you think can be done to encourage more people to get involved?

If you’re keen and have a play and concept you’re set on, the biggest hurdle is probably finding a team, as I definitely struggled in my first year to know who to ask or where to go for recommendations. As well as putting out a call via the TAFF mailing list (which you can join via their website), I actually think messaging or emailing people, who you’ve heard or seen good things about, is a really good way to get people on your team – even and especially if you haven’t met them! Our marketing manager, Alice Bate, is absolutely incredible, and is involved because I had loved her marketing for another show. I messaged her out of the blue to ask whether she’d consider running marketing for Travesties – fortunately, given that this was the day the bid was due, she said yes!

I think there’s something really amazing about creating theatre as a student, as you can get on board so many talented people (and without having to pay them). I found it quite easy to start directing as I basically began as soon as possible, directing a show in Hilary of first year after directing our Cuppers in Michaelmas – but I think the other big hurdle is feeling that it’s too late to begin. The effort OUDS puts into encouraging people who haven’t directed before is brilliant, however – and I can’t recommend enough auditioning to direct at the New Writing Festival, or going to one of the regular OUDS socials to meet other students doing drama. The move towards even more equal opportunities, and upcoming productions like Medea at the Keble O’Reilly this term, are also so exciting in terms of getting more people involved.

Universities minister says student loan ‘got me through university’

Isabel Morris
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Universities minister says student loan ‘got me through university’

Minister of State for Universities, Sam Gyimah, has said he could have been “thrown out of university” had his Oxford college not helped him convert his rent into a loan, which he subsequently paid back.

Gyimah told MPs on the Education Select Committee, who pressed him on support for disadvantaged students, that the financial support he received from Somerville College allowed him to stay at university.

He said: “I would have been thrown out of university because I couldn’t afford my rent.

“The only way I managed to survive and carry on was because the college converted my rent into a loan, which I paid when I left.

“Now, a personal anecdote is never the best foundation for policy – but I can describe my own experience as the first kind of maintenance loan which got me through university.”

Gyimah was responding to a question from Themla Walker, an MP on the committee, who said she would not have been able to graduate without support from a maintenance grant.

Maintenance grants for disadvantaged students will not be re-introduced this year. They will be replaced with loans that have interest rates set to rise to 6.3% from the autumn.

The decision has been criticised by both Labour and Conservative former education secretaries.

Committee chairman Robert Halfron, warned that there was still a “major social injustice” in access to university and argued for a need to focus on the collapse in part-time student numbers, which have fallen by 61% in the past decade.

Gyimah also said that despite the £860m per year spent on university outreach, there was no clear evidence that this investment had been successful.

He told the committee that he wants universities to be more transparent with students about how their tuition fees are being spent.

The Inheritance review – ‘it is hard to imagine this play is really as universal as it advertises’

John Livesey
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The Inheritance review – ‘it is hard to imagine this play is really as universal as it advertises’

It is a not unproblematic cliché of gay art and life that desire and culture are passed down between generations. In his book Returning to Rheims, French intellectual Didier Eribon describes sleeping with an older man and, after waking up in his room, perusing the stranger’s personal CD collection. It was there, Eribon recalls, that he first discovered Barbara Streisand. It was also there that he came to understand how listening to her music might be a way of relating to a larger gay community. The encounter, though transitory, was more than just sexual: it was a step towards coming into one’s self and one’s culture, of adopting the practices of gayness or, at least, one specific type of gayness.

This cultural exchange is the main subject of Matthew Lopez’s new two-part epic, currently playing at the Young Vic. Its title, The Inheritance, is the name Lopez gives to that fraught but special relationship between generations of gay men. In a moving scene, in which this is explained, we are told of a history of silence and invisibility throughout which the only way for homosexuals to come to know themselves and others like them was to congregate in urinals and bars. It’s stirring stuff indeed.

Inspired by E.M Forster’s Howards End, the play follows the journey of one couple: thoughtful and sensitive Eric, and egotistical, fame-seeking Toby. The pair start off in love and lust however their bond is marred by the entrance of Adam, a rich and attractive twenty-something, and Walter, a warm-hearted, wise but dying older man. As the unpicking of Eric and Toby’s relationship begins, the narrative spirals outward to include multiple lovers and friends. Hearts are variously broken and fixed, bridges burnt and rebuilt.

The set, designed by Bob Crowley, is a simple raised platform around which the cast sit when not performing. It cleverly evokes a huge table and is used for the staging of several ensemble discussions. The motif reminds us of the primary intention of Lopez’s writing: debate. His is a play about history, community, and family, different homes, and how they are haunted by their residents. It is provocative in its portrayal of the crippling effects of narcissism, the cruelty of New York City, and the horror of AIDS. In fact, it possesses an emotional and thematic breadth that defies easy summarisation and, in turn, invites accusations of unwieldiness.

Perhaps appropriately for a play about changes over time, The Inheritance is also very long. Coming in two parts and lasting over seven hours, the drama has a muscularity which threatens to batter audiences into submission. Its structure also reminds us of that other AIDS drama in whose shadow it conspicuously lies: Angels in America. This connection is one I am certain Lopez intends for us to draw, not only for favourable comparison, but because his work is full of intertextual references. Having the characters list their predictable favourite books – Giovanni’s Room, Call Me by Your Name, The Swimming Pool – is one amusing moment which was well-received by the large number of gay men in the room. I amongst them recognised the itemised description of my teenage bookshelf and appreciated the characteristic honesty and self-awareness of Lopez’s dialogue, also evident in a shockingly exact anal sex scene and in numerous gags about Grindr.

The inclusion of E.M Forster, the author of Howards End, is the most prominent example of Lopez’s interest in the literary representation of sexuality. Also the writer of Maurice, a classic of the gay canon, Forster begins the show advising Eric, Toby and their friends how to ‘tell their story’, and reappears throughout as a mentor and quasi-preacher on the truths of gay life. His presence, whilst a surprise, helps to clarify the important political and intellectual issues at play. Moreover, the wit and warmth with which he is brought to life by Paul Hilton renders Forster an invaluable figure.

It is in the second-part of this production, as Hilton’s appearances becomes more spare, that the interest wanes. As Lopez dedicates more of his attention to a plot-driven adaptation of his source material, the portrait of gay-life he has built begins to lose its variety and chances of being relatable. Initially establishing itself as a document of modern gay experience, a discussion allowing everyone a seat at the table, The Inheritance slowly reduces to a single narrative modeled on an outdated mode of storytelling. It loses its keen eye for modernity and develops a bizarre obsession with the improbable and specific.

As an interrogation of identification across ages, The Inheritance is full of repetitions, reflections and foils. However, as Lopez tightens his focus on the plot, the grasp of his material starts to loosen and the identification I knew I was supposed to feel began to default. Particularly given his dubious attempts to cover class (dealt with in extreme and offensive juxtapositions of wealthy Long-Islanders and starving sex workers) and race (white men speaking over their African-American peers about intersectionality), it is hard to imagine that this play is really as accessible or as universal as it advertises.

The two most memorable sequences of the play, both in the first part, are abstract moments which feature multiple voices and bodies onstage. It is here that Lopez and director Stephen Daldry are most successful in capturing some new conception of what it means to be gay. Elsewhere, this production is prone to feel too individualised and somewhat confused. Maybe as part of a younger demographic, it is just not my life that is being put on stage. Or maybe, queer people our age simply demand more subtle, modern and intersectional art. For those weeping during the standing ovation, I have no doubt Lopez’s play is a gift. It is, however, one I do not feel I am qualified or keen enough to inherit.

The Inheritance will be at the Young Vic until 19th May.

“You have to really fight even to get a game”

Matthew Roller
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“You have to really fight even to get a game”

The County Championship started last week with typically little fanfare. The majority of games were rain-affected, and, as should be expected when the first round of games is played in mid-April, seam bowlers dominated. Only two of the ten counties in action picked a specialist spinner, and both of them – Middlesex’s Ollie Rayner and Warwickshire’s Jeetan Patel – were defensive off-spinners with first-class batting averages above 20. At this time of year, obduracy and grit are valued higher than risk and flair.

Should it be at all surprising, then, that England have only produced one genuinely world-class spinner in the past forty years, and no top-quality leg-spinners this side of the Second World War? The domestic calendar does not suit leg-spinners, who need thousands of hours of practice to hone the hardest skill to master in the game: why would a team take such a gamble? And while there are famous examples of English leg-spinners struggling to master their art – Adil Rashid recently gave up first-class cricket to focus on his white-ball skills, while seven years ago Scott Borthwick found he could only get into the Durham side by turning himself into a top order batsman – the county game is littered with cases of talented bowlers losing their way.

Michael Munday, who read Chemistry at Corpus Christi College between 2002 and 2006, is one such example. After what should have been a breakthrough performance at the end of the 2007 season, in which he took 8-55 against a strong Nottinghamshire side, Munday was thrust into the Somerset side at the start of 2008, and predictably struggled.

“The unfortunate thing was that 8-for came on the last day of the season,” he says. “The next April, you think to yourself: ‘it’s cold, the pitches are green, and I’ve lost that form and groove from the previous summer’. I bowled OK in the first game, then came up against Kevin Pietersen at Taunton on a flat wicket after we’d been bowled out for 100.

“That wasn’t a great situation to be in, and probably quite rightly I didn’t play for a bit after that game. I shouldn’t necessarily have been in the side in April and May, but then you have to make sure come July or August you’re in the right place, and I never quite got into that situation. You have to really fight even to get a game.”

Two years later, Munday was unceremoniously released by Somerset, and has never played at the highest level again. His career trajectory is similar to a vast number of English leg-spinners of the past twenty years, and Munday takes issue with the country’s obsession with wrist spin.

“I don’t think leg spin is easy,” he says. “It is a tough skill – it takes time. Now if anyone breaks through in county cricket, there’s a culture of: ‘oh, let’s talk about him, he should be playing for England’, and it requires the individuals to be strong, resilient characters to live with those expectations. As soon as [Mason] Crane plays one game as does poorly, suddenly he’s written off, and then when he plays in a T20 and does well, he’s the next big thing. There aren’t many leg-spinners out there playing four-day cricket who haven’t been given a go in Test cricket.”

Similarly, Munday is happy to criticise the captains he has played under, and suggests that there is a general lack of understanding as to how a leg-spinner should be developed. “There’s this thing where people can get compared to Shane Warne – any leg-spinner who comes through gets compared to him,” Munday says. “When [Marcus] Trescothick is your captain, he’s thinking about what field positions would be there if he were facing Warne – a silly point, a short leg. The tendency was to kind of go down that route of having quite an attacking field, when that actually forces the bowler to bowl quite defensively.

“People often say you shouldn’t set a field for a bad ball, but I think you should set a field for where the ball’s going to go. If you think you might bowl a full toss at some point, and that will go to deep mid-wicket – why not have a man at deep mid-wicket? There’s not a huge culture and experience of too many leg-spinners playing in county cricket.

“It is made particularly difficult though when you come on with a field that is too attacking, and you go for a couple of boundaries, and suddenly you’re on the defensive, rather than starting more defensively, and bringing men in from there.”

I get the impression that Munday enjoyed his cricket most when he was still breaking through, and his time at Oxford epitomises that. As well as becoming the first man since 1866 to win four consecutive Varsities for Oxford, Munday pitted himself against some of England’s finest batsmen in the early season UCCE games against county sides, playing for the combined Oxford/Brookes side.

After taking the wickets of Andrew Strauss and Owais Shah on his first-class debut, Munday took a five-for in his first Varsity Match, under the captaincy of future England all-rounder Jamie Dalrymple. “He instilled from an early point that there was a difference between getting your Blue and being a winning Blue, and I think he was right to get that across,” Munday says. “You need to take it away from a discussion about getting in the side and competing against the other students to get a spot, and instead make it all about actually beating Cambridge.”

The following summer, another Varsity win followed, and Munday was picked for an England under-19s side featuring Alastair Cook, Samit Patel, Luke Wright, and Ravi Bopara. Another Varsity win in 2005 was followed by his fourth and finest success, in which he took 11 wickets for 143 runs, including five-wicket hauls in both Cambridge innings.

Spin to win: how Munday fared in his four first-class Varsity matches

2003: 2/46, 5/83, Oxford win by an innings and 71 runs
2004: 4/36, 2/63, Oxford win by an innings and 77 runs
2005: 1/25, 2/45, Oxford win by an innings and 213 runs
2006: 6/77, 5/66, Oxford win by nine wickets

“It was really down to me to get the best players out – I made a really significant difference,” he says. “It was a big thing for me to be able to step up. Often when you’re coming through as a young player, you’re constantly moving up a level, so you’re never one of the best players. At that point, I was one of our better players, and if I’d bowled poorly, I don’t think we’d have won.

“Four-year course, four wins. To have played in all four was a really special achievement, more so than taking the wickets – I was pretty proud.”

While Munday’s cricketing career is one that he will ultimately look back on with some regrets, I sense that his path is one that many other leg-spinners will follow. They are the next big thing as a youngster, and thrust into the spotlight on the path for greatness, only for the system to chew them up and spit them back out again. English cricket’s tortured relationship with leg spin is not news to anyone, and it seems set to continue.

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