< 1 minute read A couple of days ago, we wrote about the slow erosion of a Test team over the course of a series. This is part of the game, but at what point does it become too pronounced? Australia have omitted their two main pace bowlers for the third and final Test
Continue readingMonth: November 2012
Ricky Ponting’s batting average and face
3 minute read Take a look at this face. Tell us you don’t instantly hate that face. You could pretty accurately track the progress of Ricky Ponting’s career by our opinion of his face at various points in time. It started badly. He made his first Test hundred in his first Ashes innings
Continue readingA three-Test marathon for Australia and South Africa
2 minute read The modern Test series is more about endurance than ever before. It may feature fewer matches, but with little pause between them, it is more like one ongoing slog than a sequence of distinct skirmishes. We’ll see this vividly in the third and decisive Test between Australia and South Africa
Continue readingHow do you feel about England’s win over India in the second Test?
< 1 minute read Regardless of the outcome of the rest of the series, we’re inclined to say this was one of the most impressive England wins we’ve seen. It’s not just that it’s an England win in India – which is as rare as a sighting of a wendigo – it’s that they
Continue readingMonty Panesar’s dimension
< 1 minute read People can overcomplicate things sometimes. Pyramid tea bags? You can make a perfect cup of tea with an ordinary bag, so this is not a worthwhile development. Okay, maybe that’s not precisely the right analogy here. We do accept that there is something in the Monty Panesar has played one
Continue reading
The wicket to run exchange rate
< 1 minute read A run doesn’t have a set value. Instead, its value changes from one match to the next and arguably even fluctuates over the course of a single match. This is why it’s important not to pay too much attention to averages. In Tests, the value of a run is defined
Continue readingMonty Panesar is playing and the world is a slightly better place
< 1 minute read We could have gone with “Monty Panesar’s back“, but we’ve actually done that joke about him twice before. You have to draw the line somewhere. We fully expect you all to now tell us that we’ve drawn that line incorrectly. But let’s not bicker about whether a joke should be
Continue readingMichael Clarke can give it a rest now
< 1 minute read Okay, we get it – you’re amazing at batting. It’s getting a bit old now. This wasn’t Michael Clarke’s first double hundred of the year. It wasn’t even his first double hundred of the year in Adelaide; it was his second, and he has four of the buggers in total.
Continue readingWhat happens between Test matches?
2 minute read If good things come to those who wait then what do we get when we’re not allowed to wait? (Readers in the UK might recognise the music in that video from something else.) This England tour of India started well, with three warm-up matches, but now we’re back in the
Continue readingWho’s your favourite cricketer?
< 1 minute read And why? We think we might be interested, but we reserve the right to change our opinion should you write 3,000 words without any line breaks. Our favourite cricketer was Waqar Younis, as you’ll know if you used to read what was then The Wisden Cricketer. We don’t think the
Continue reading