< 1 minute read Good day to you all. Count Cricket here. Apologies for my absence, but certain developments have led to my spending several weeks indoors. Frustrating, but unavoidable. Fortunately, I did manage to read the newspaper during this unscheduled ‘downtime’ and have kept tabs on County Championship developments. I can basically sum
Continue readingMonth: July 2012
Good luck to James Taylor but we really don’t get it
< 1 minute read Ravi Bopara’s found another way of missing out on a Test match. We don’t know what it is, but it’s led to England selecting James Taylor in his place. We really don’t understand this. Taylor plays the kind of innings where everyone coos about his ‘class’ and says how it
Continue readingEngland v Australia day-night match report from Birmingham
3 minute read Ne writes: We had arranged to meet at Marylebone station, in order to get the Chilterns Railways line up to Birmingham. This route had many advantages: firstly, on the day tickets are significantly cheaper than those offered by Virgin at Euston; secondly, the train nerd in APB (my travelling companion)
Continue readingEnduring South African flawlessness with the bat
< 1 minute read We’re not a fan of batting. Fours and sixes elicit an approving nod of the head, but they don’t move us in the same way as wickets. This has perhaps been compounded by a period of Test cricket that lasted until recently in which huge scores became the norm. That
Continue readingIngredients of a Dale Steyn
2 minute read Is there a real lack of perspective these days, or is it just that the internet has provided an outlet for people who never had it? Before the first Test, some people were talking up Vernon Philander as being the main threat to England’s batsmen and after the first day,
Continue readingEngland embrace the modern fashion for innings defeats
2 minute read When it comes to meticulous planning, individual excellence and the most admirable examples of team spirit, the cyclists seem to have cornered the market here in Britain. The cricket team has rather folded. Can no side merely lose a Test match any more? Nowadays, when good teams fall, it always
Continue readingBowling dry – not a cure-all
< 1 minute read Who are the batsmen who have really troubled England in home Tests in recent years? Rahul Dravid, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Marlon Samuels. And what characterises those three batsmen? An unhurried method, we’d say – they don’t go chasing after the ball. Is this a coincidence? When the ball doesn’t swing,
Continue readingAlastair Cook – endurance batsman
2 minute read Hello South Africa and welcome to England. This is Alastair Cook. He is fitter than you are. We’re not sure you’re going to get on very well. Thus far, South Africa have had a fairly typical experience of touring England. It has rained and Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott have
Continue readingEngland v South Africa preview
2 minute read There seem to be a lot of head to head type previews of this series. We never really get much out of them, because cricket doesn’t really work on a points system. There are no judges comparing the two teams’ attributes. You decide which side’s the better by pitting them
Continue readingKamran Akmal’s back
< 1 minute read As in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. Or has he? Actually, that would explain a lot. Lack of core mobility would probably have an impact on catching ability and could potentially give rise to the level of pan-handed buffoonery exhibited by Kamran Akmal. Actually, on second thoughts,
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