Rory Burns counts his blessings amid England fragility at the crease | Andy Bull

Australia players taunt the England left-hander that he is just lucky but he simply knows how to exploit every opportunity

The way Gary Player tells it, it goes like this. He was practising his bunker game somewhere in Texas when “this good old boy with a big hat stopped to watch”. Player hit his next shot into the hole and the stranger said to him, “You got 50 bucks if you get the next one in.” Player did, so the Texan said he double it if he made three in a row. “Boy,” he told Player as he peeled a hundred off his roll of bills a second later. “I’ve never seen anyone so lucky in my life.”

So Player fired back at him, “It’s funny, the harder I practise, the luckier I get.” And that, Player says, “is where the quote originated”.

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