2 minute read Many things will happen when England play India from tomorrow. It’s tempting to imagine that the first Test match is some sort of newspaper headline final which will only feature those who were prominent during the quarters and semis in recent weeks. Viewed from that perspective, which is more likely:
Continue readingMonth: July 2018
The Lord’s Throdkin dispute
2 minute read You may or may not remember the Lord’s Throdkin. If you do, you will be very excited to hear that there has been a development… Ged writes: Lancastrian nephew-in-law Escamillo Escapillo is partial to my Lord’s Throdkin cookies. I was to spend the first of three days at Lord’s watching
Continue readingAdil Rashid’s back!
2 minute read As in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. Is Adil Rashid a bowler who can take wickets when others cannot? Yeah, probably. Sometimes. Does Adil Rashid’s selection for the Test squad having previously jacked in red ball cricket maybe raise a couple of awkward questions? Erm, yeah, probably.
Continue readingThe three main changes you can always make to the England Test team
2 minute read When a Test squad’s due to be announced, everyone normally has a default XI in mind and then we all make swaps according to our own prejudices. Typically, everyone wants to make between one and three changes. Change No 1 is when you replace the rubbish batsman you hate with
Continue readingSorry about this but we’re going to report the latest rumours about The Hundred
2 minute read That joke isn’t funny any more. You know the one. The one where you make up an outlandish format detail about The Hundred in an effort to satirise the ECB. The problem is that while The Hundred seems like rich source material, it really isn’t. The joke suggestions are too
Continue readingWatch the Al Jazeera match fixing documentary
2 minute read If you want to watch that Al Jazeera documentary about match-fixing (spot fixing, actually) to see for yourself whether the allegations have any merit, here it is (or click here). The film went out in May, but it’s in the news again this week because Glenn Maxwell’s been talking about
Continue readingEssex v West Indies indoctrination of a young mind match report
2 minute read Dan writes: My seven year old son looks a demon with the bat in his hands in the back garden, and he actually pays attention when the cricket’s on the TV. He seems to reserve special interest for the Test matches, which is very pleasing. So this summer we signed
Continue readingWe made up a word and Wisden published it
< 1 minute read The word is ‘schedusfaction’ and it means ‘satisfaction with the scheduling of a cricket tour’. We didn’t realise the world had use for such a word until this summer. England are about to play a Test series against India. You may be aware of this and that might be because
Continue readingVirat Kohli’s ‘I’ve just been bowled by Adil Rashid’ face
< 1 minute read When we wrote about what it’s like to be Virat Kohli, we didn’t for one minute think that there would be any overlap with what it’s like to be Mike Gatting. Turns out there is. Virat Kohli and Mike Gatting both do a thing where they make an astonished face
Continue readingPlease can we very quickly talk about that very fine MS Dhoni innings in the last one-dayer?
2 minute read Imagine a tiger hunting a deer. He’s squatting down in the undergrowth, taut and primed to strike. The deer is ambling around just in front of him, oblivious. When the deer gets close enough, the tiger will leap out and bite him in the neck. The deer mills around. He
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