4 minute read Joe Denly is an unbelievable Test cricketer. You’ll note that we’re saying ‘is’ and not ‘was’ there. That’s because of the specific way in which Joe Denly is/was unbelievable. Sometimes you only need to do so much to get the gig. And sometimes you only need to do so much
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4 minute read Let’s talk about picking bowling attacks. Let’s use the first Test between England and the West Indies as a case study and, for an extra frisson of excitement, let’s do this halfway through the game – that way any specifics we use can turn out to be very wrong. Because
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< 1 minute read The answer is ‘none’. None more responsibility. Jason Holder is a parsimonious line bowler of immaculate line and length. He is also a two-metre strike bowler, who seams the ball plenty. He’s a decent bat too, not to mention an absolutely peerless anti-Lumbergh of a captain. Now it turns out
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2 minute read Tonight was the first episode of the BBC’s new Test highlights show. It’s called Today at the Test, which is a great name (although given today’s rain and its 45-minute running time, this first one should probably have been called Today at the Test Plus Quite a Bit of Other
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4 minute read Do you know the only way you can successfully ‘dig in’ as a batsman? Completely and utterly mindlessly. Any other approach is far too much mental hard work and means you’ll make a bad decision sooner rather than later. We wrote a long thing for the Nightwatchman, Wisden’s quarterly publication,
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2 minute read Cricket’s back. As in ‘returned’. It hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. England play the West Indies at the Rose Bowl, starting tomorrow (Wednesday). It’s on Sky Sports (which you can get one month at a time via Now TV) with highlights on BBC2 at 7pm. Here are three things
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2 minute read It’s hard not to feel that the role of ‘ambassador’ has been somewhat devalued in recent years by the marketing industry. It used to be a high-ranking diplomat. But now… “I am very excited to be a part of Team Himalaya and be the ambassador for their Men’s Face Wash
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2 minute read Mohammad Nabi didn’t play for Afghanistan against Scotland in April 2019. Nothing too unusual there. Nabi had been at the IPL, playing for Sunrisers Hyderabad, and they’d qualified for the closing stages. Except it is unusual. It’s highly unusual. It was Afghanistan’s 112th one-day international (ODI) and Mohammed Nabi played
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3 minute read We’re pitting an England XI comprising the players we invested in the most against an Antagonists XI using International Cricket Captain’s ‘All Time Greats’ mode. England made 202 runs and lost four wickets on day three. It was very boring and far and away their most successful day. Australia still
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3 minute read We’re pitting an England XI comprising the players we invested in the most against an Antagonists XI using International Cricket Captain’s ‘All Time Greats’ mode. Taken in isolation, day two was less rubbish than day one. However, the nature of Test cricket is that it cannot be taken in isolation,
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