< 1 minute read When is a one-off not a one-off? When he inspires a copycat. Lasith Malinga is not unique. We happened across this video of Sinhalese Sports Club’s Nuwan Thushara the other day. Nuwan has clearly thought to himself: “That bowling action of Lasith Malinga’s looks really logical and easy to reproduce.
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When did Kolkata become dibbly-dobbly military-medium paradise?
< 1 minute read If you were India and had access to a time-and-place machine capable of replacing a nearby patch of land with one from elsewhere and elsewhen, then when and where would you choose to play Sri Lanka at Test cricket? It’s unlikely that you answered ‘Derby last April’ but that is
Continue readingMop-up of the day – capybaras and helicopters
2 minute read Firstly, let’s just savour yet another fine moment for Rangana Herath, an international cricketer who is not only older than us, but also better than every other cricketer there’s ever been (possible hyperbole). Spending most of your career with Muttiah Muralitharan as your benchmark can lead to having standards some
Continue readingChamari Atapattu can hit a cricket ball
< 1 minute read Chamari Atapattu – full name, somewhat confusingly, Atapattumudiyanselage Chamari Jayangani, so that she appears on scorecards with the one name she doesn’t appear to use – has played an innings. If anyone else had bothered to help her, Sri Lanka would have won. At the same time, if anyone else
Continue readingPakistan don’t care what year it is
< 1 minute read “300-plus scores? No, thank you. We’ll just persist with our old approach of bowling the opposition out for slightly less than our own low score, if that’s all right with you.” Pakistan held South Africa to 219-8 off 50 overs. Sri Lanka managed a whopping 236 all out against them.
Continue readingSri Lanka force Virat Kohli to use the other knife
2 minute read Imagine you have a good knife and a really shitty knife. You regularly use both, but the shitty one’s kind of shitty. It can cope with cheese and maybe a courgette, but you’d never risk it on an onion or something like that. One day you want to slice a
Continue readingSo Kumar Sangakkara’s in form then (and not even put off by snapping his bat in half)
< 1 minute read Kumar Sangakkara’s last five County Championship innings have been 136, 105, 114, 120 and 200. Today’s double hundred came in a team total of just 369. And he wasn’t even put off by snapping his bat in half. SNAP. Sanga’s bat ends up in two pieces off the bowling of
Continue readingSteve Smith’s brain fades still further, Bangladesh do the reverse
< 1 minute read Bangladesh have won nine Tests and we make this their second win. The convention is to remove matches in which Bangladesh feature from all Test statistics. This seems unduly harsh at the best of times, but it seems even more so when it’s them who you’re measuring. Nevertheless, in the
Continue readingThe South hit the North and the great flattener
< 1 minute read One of the few things that people agree upon about the lyrics of The Fall’s Hit the North is that one of the first lines is “my cat says eeeeee-ack”. So what can we agree upon about the South’s hitting of the North’s bowlers today? That it was more successful
Continue readingVernon Philander is there if you need some seasoning
2 minute read We’ve spent much of the morning trying to work out what kind of a vehicle Vernon Philander is. After much thought, we’ve concluded that he’s not a vehicle at all – he’s a pepper grinder. South Africa have a lot of whizzy, fancy kitchen gadgets. Dale Steyn is the luxury
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