< 1 minute readAs a rule, if people aren’t moaning about the thing you feared they’d moan about and are instead moaning about something completely different, you’ve succeeded. The elimination of moaning is of course not a possibility. It’s like a pocket of air under wallpaper. The best you can do is displace
Continue readingMonth: November 2015
Night-day cricket should be the next innovation
< 1 minute readThose watching the first day of the inaugural day-night Test between Australia and New Zealand will have been sorely disappointed. We were promised slapstick and catastrophe, but got neither. If you asked us to describe it, we’d say it looked very much like Test cricket, only with a pink ball.
Continue readingWhen did Eoin Morgan become England’s short format ‘anchor’?
2 minute readRemember when Eoin Morgan was the exciting one. Remember how you used to shout “Morgan’s in!” when he came to the crease and how the person you were shouting to used to respond: “I don’t care. I don’t like cricket.” Remember how you used to flaunt your knowledge by telling
Continue readingWho says Tests are supposed to last five days?
< 1 minute readWe’ve always been of the opinion that a Test can last up to five days and that if all of that allotted time is required, things haven’t really panned out correctly. Others see it differently. We often see comments of the oeuvre ‘a Test is supposed to last five days’
Continue readingLiam Plunkett gets a fractionally undercooked deal
2 minute readNot a raw deal, like Chris Read got, but pretty rare – bloodier than he asked for in the middle. Plunkett was picked to go on the tour to the UAE and then somehow found himself three places down the pecking order for the South Africa tour despite not having
Continue readingLast in the Tin Bath – a review of David Lloyd’s autobiography
3 minute readBack when we reviewed Start the Car: The World According to Bumble, we suggested that rather than majoring on Lloyd’s zaniness, they might have been better off writing a traditional autobiography. Well this is what they’ve done. The result is indeed a better book. For those that don’t know, before
Continue readingJos Buttler and the myth of a batsman’s ‘natural game’
3 minute readAfter watching Jos Buttler hit over a third of the deliveries he faced for boundaries against Pakistan, it’s tempting to wonder whether maybe, just maybe, he might do well to shelve his watchful, deliberate approach to Test batting. It seems to us that he’s much, much safer at the crease,
Continue readingEngland retrieve Nick Compton from the freezer
2 minute readBack in 2013, we suggested that England couldn’t refreeze Nick Compton having already defrosted him (this makes fractionally more sense if you read the article). Turns out they did. They stuck him back and now they’re defrosting him for a second time. Nick Compton’s back in the fridge! At least
Continue readingIan Bell will not bat like a prince before inexplicably spooning one to cover against South Africa
< 1 minute readThey’ve only gone and dropped him. Dropped him as if he were a cricket ball and they were him standing in the slips at some point in the last 12 months. There’s a hideous video on the ECB Twitter feed where selector James Whitaker mouths the usual platitudes about Bell
Continue readingThe Mitchell Johnson bowling action – a nasty and effective and unreliable thing
2 minute readMitchell Johnson contributed some extremely interesting cricket and you can’t ask for much more than that from a player. Overall, his record is very good, but that long-term-very-goodness was created by opposing short-term extremes. At his best, Johnson was as exciting to watch as pretty much any cricketer ever. If
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