2 minute read The main criticism of England’s one-day batting approach recently has been that they lack the dynamic hitting which is supposed to characterise the modern game. While that’s true up to a point, we actually don’t think that it’s the worst of their problems. There’s something else going on during the
Continue readingMonth: August 2014
Mop-up of the day – negativity and The Kingdom
< 1 minute read First up, our fortnightly Twitter round-up for Cricinfo where Grobbelaar has correctly identified that we bring nothing but negativity to the world. We’re pretty sure Shaun Pollock would have a groansome quote about judging people to deliver as a riposte to that, but he’d probably also have one about bitter,
Continue readingSuresh Raina v England – what this means for the World Cup
2 minute read Before today, Suresh Raina had made three ODI hundreds in 193 matches. He made them against Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Hong Kong. But Raina bats in the middle order, so that doesn’t tell us a lot. Let’s look at fifties instead. Against New Zealand, he has one in 11 innings;
Continue readingMiddlesex Second XI v Essex Second XI at Radlett
2 minute read Ged writes: It seemed like an excellent plan when the idea was hatched. In the absence of first class cricket between Middlesex and Essex for the foreseeable future, Charley “The Gent” Malloy and I would take in a day of second XI cricket between our two teams. As luck would
Continue readingMop-up of the day – demons and barometers
< 1 minute read First, some links: Summat about a demon for Cricinfo The latest Shire Horse for All Out Cricket Our cycling site should you wish to follow the Tour of Spain with us Now let’s spend the rest of Bank Holiday Monday in classic fashion by moaning about rain.
Continue readingVictory for a city in the summer
< 1 minute read Cities disappear in the summer. Winter has cities, summer has counties – or at least that’s the way it used to be. Now Birmingham have won a cricket tournament and we don’t know where we are. The weather has been unseasonably cool this last week. Even the climate’s confused. Our
Continue readingEngland v India ODI fantasy league
< 1 minute read All Out Cricket’s Test series fantasy league is over. Our mini league, The Kingdom, was won by… er… did anyone actually check before they deleted the league? We’d guess it was either Balladeer’s Bhangra-Morris Fusion side or Patrick’s p = mv, both of which were almost certainly in the top
Continue readingFist forming and extreme hat retrieval
2 minute read It’s the fashion these days to look back on a losing streak and say that you were playing well in patches and that you knew all it would take would be a slight improvement and everything would be hunky-dory again. This always gets on our nerves, because of course you
Continue readingNo you can’t come up for air
2 minute read Tomorrow, a view on India’s Test series, but today let’s look at England’s – or at least at how it finished. Some of the later events are being ruled ineligible for analyss on the grounds that India were too crap, but we found England’s approach quite interesting. 178 all out,
Continue readingShastri is the boss
< 1 minute read There have been some major revelations about Ravi Shastri this summer. Apparently, he can be interesting and insightful and also possesses a sense of humour. Who knew? We learned this while watching Sky’s oddly watchable Test discussion programme, The Verdict, on which he has been a regular guest. Before that,
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