Michael Clarke and ‘the line’

2 minute read One of the most annoying things about the Australian cricket team is not its verbal aggression but the players’ relentless self-righteousness about it. Here’s a quote from Michael Clarke that you’ll feel like you’ve read a thousand times before. “I think we play our cricket hard on the field but

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Steve Magoffin and MacGuffins

< 1 minute read In film, a MacGuffin is something characters strive for which rather conveniently drives the plot. As often as not, its exact nature is unimportant. What matters is that at least one of the characters wants it. People aren’t fighting to acquire Sussex’s Steve Magoffin, so he doesn’t really fit the

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One batsman and a bit of pace bowling

2 minute read Refreshingly manageable levels of information this week with very little of note happening with regards to candidates for the England squad. Gary Ballance This is probably the headline event. Gary Ballance made 174 against Northamptonshire. Reading between the lines written by better-informed people than us, it’s possible that England have

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We wrote about Twenty20 commentary

< 1 minute read The headline promises something of a barrel-dwelling fish shooting exercise, but hopefully it’s more than that. It’s not so much ‘T20 commentators talk utter rot‘ as ‘some T20 commentators are occasionally slow to pick up on tactical trends and they therefore assess match situations according to outdated notions of how

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England hire a Maxonian

< 1 minute read Is it a good idea for a team that can’t bat to hire the coach of a team that can’t bat? It’s probably okay. The England coach is basically just a management figure, after all and Peter Moores seems pretty good at that side of things. He brought in many

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Ben Stokes and the cure-all that is ‘passion’

< 1 minute read One worrying, but entirely predictable, revelation from Ben Stokes’ recent interview in the Guardian is that he’s broken bones punching inanimate objects before. He reckons he’s going to learn this time. “I don’t think punching lockers is the way forward for anyone. There’s only going to be one winner there.”

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