< 1 minute read He’s confident without being arrogant; humble without being meek; aggressive without being irresponsible; watchful without being bogged down. That’s what he’d say anyway. England’s cricketers know they have to say the right things and it’s painful to hear at times. They have to remain positive otherwise the media call them
Continue readingMonth: September 2009
An Ashes win equals big money
< 1 minute read You’re an England player. You’ve won the Ashes. You get in touch with your agent: “Commercial opportunities. What have you got for me?” Your agent’s silent a minute and you can hear him shuffling some papers on his desk. “Hello. Are you there? Commercial opportunities. What have you got?” Your
Continue readingDay night Test cricket
< 1 minute read Our knee jerk-reaction to suggestions that day-night Test cricket be played was that it was a shocker of an idea. We’ve always thought of knee-jerk reactions as being worth clinging to in the face of subsequent strong evidence against your point of view, but on this occasion we’re softening our
Continue readingTim Paine, Australia’s wicketkeeper
< 1 minute read Name of a professional wrestler. Face of a junior tennis player from the Home Counties.
Continue readingAre you sick of 50 over cricket?
< 1 minute read The conventional one-day game is probably the least popular format in England right now. Seven 50 over matches have been tacked onto the end of a summer that’s already seen a Test and one-day series against the West Indies, the Twenty20 World Cup, the Ashes and what would have been
Continue readingEngland’s one-day cricket and life
< 1 minute read We’re warming to the idea that England’s one-day cricket is like life – all crushing disappointments and anticlimax. You want to be a winner. You want to succeed. You try so very hard to become competent at something, but everything you learn seems to be immediately rendered irrelevant by some
Continue readingIt’s a time of pessimism and things dying
< 1 minute read Autumn. The cricket season ends. The plants die. Every sunny day is tainted with the thought that it might be the last. On the field there’s the Pro40 and one-day internationals and all there is to look forward to is the Champions’ Trophy. If a cricket tournament could be a
Continue readingHow old is Brett Lee?
< 1 minute read Brett Lee is nearly 33, but he’s tried to obscure this fact by getting a spiky haircut. Unfortunately, spikiness is only considered a youthful hair quality among the middle-aged, so Lee’s made an error here. It’s the kind of hair that looks like it should have a Global Hypercolour T-shirt
Continue readingAshes or one-day cricket?
< 1 minute read As an England supporter, it’s tempting to think that you’d take the Ashes over a one-day series win. No other nationality would think like this. Most people would at least entertain the idea that their side could win both and might even be persuaded into thinking that they were in
Continue readingEngland cricketers playing football
< 1 minute read We know that many of you spent your childhoods betting how many quail eggs your servants could find in half an hour, but we went to a normal school. We played football pretty much every day for five years and never once got injured. When England’s cricketers get a football
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