< 1 minute read Not sure what organisation or body deems a player to be ‘up and running’. We’re going to try and decree it ourself and hope that it sticks. But what do we mean by ‘up and running’? Virat Kohli’s just about the best one-day batsman in the world and he’s been
Continue readingMonth: December 2013
Ben Stokes is a large, brightly-coloured straw
< 1 minute read You can see him a mile off. Clutch him. CLUTCH HIM! It’s not so much that he scored a hundred on what was actually a fairly even, true pitch between the cracks. It’s more that he looked unruffled. Any idiot can bat, but hardly anyone can bat in the muggy
Continue readingThe Jonathan Trott era
3 minute read Can we make this ‘a thing’? We’re pretty sure it’s a thing. The story goes like this: England pick Trott, he scores a hundred and they reclaim the Ashes. He then spends the next four years shielding the middle order so that it – and also the lower order –
Continue readingKevin Pietersen and caricatured batting
2 minute read Kevin Pietersen can often look a caricature of a batsman. Look at his leave. When he leaves a ball, Jesus Christ it stays left. The ball really knows it hasn’t been hit following KP’s huge, flourishing, circular withdrawal of the bat. Today, Pietersen batted sensibly and in keeping with this
Continue readingBrad Haddin is kind of shameless
2 minute read Bowlers win you matches, but batsmen lose them. Is there really much point weighing up day one of the third Test when England’s batsmen might render all that preceded it almost entirely irrelevant? May as well go through the motions, just in case. Five down A growing theme of this
Continue readingA short, to-the-point Perth preview
< 1 minute read England picked the ganglesome trio of Steven Finn, Boyd Rankin and Chris Tremlett for this Ashes tour specifically in order to exploit hard, bouncy Australian pitches. Perth is the hardest, bounciest pitch of all and it seems reasonably likely that none of these bowlers will play. Assuming they don’t, what
Continue readingThe state of the cricketing nation
2 minute read We’ve a growing problem with what might be called the ‘dissection of the nation’s cricket system’ piece. More specifically, we’ve a problem with the increasing readiness to publish such articles. The state of the cricketing nation piece is when a writer draws far-reaching conclusions about the way the sport is
Continue readingIreland/England v England/Ireland match report from Malahide
2 minute read Chuck writes: I have never been to a cricket match of any description, level or length, even though it is my all time favourite sport. Despite that, or maybe because of it, I had absolutely no intention of attending the Ireland/England versus England/Ireland one-day international in Malahide in person. (Old
Continue readingEngland’s batting improves a bit
2 minute read Let’s not go overboard. There are two ways to look at England’s second innings. The first is to see it as indicative of an upward curve, which gives hope for the rest of the series. The second is to say that standards are now so low that it would actually
Continue readingThe tufty-haired boulder and the blancmange
< 1 minute read The escape route outlined in yesterday’s article? England evaded it perfectly, opting instead to stand their ground, whereupon they were flattened by the giant, tufty-haired boulder which has been rumbling after them since they landed Down Under. The most frustrating thing is that, for all the devastation, Mitchell Johnson only
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