Sunny Southwell: emerging from the depths of despair to become the playground of the stars

Memo to Pakistan's cricketers floundering under a flood of England runs in the Test match in Multan on Thursday: there is always hope, no matter how bleak the situation appears.

Look at Southwell, which was in its case literally flooded following a deluge in October of last year. The third "once in a generation" incident in 16 years left parts of the track under three feet of water, yet as it approaches the first anniversary of that sombre soaking, the course now finds itself reinvented as the playground of the stars. The equine ones, anyway.

As Pakistan coach Jason Gillespie would be the first to acknowledge after his side leaked 823 runs to England, it is not an easy process. Southwell went through a hard autumn, winter and spring, frantically drying itself out, erecting temporary facilities and getting the show back on the road with scarcely a racegoer allowed in, as in the dark days of the pandemic.