< 1 minute read The plan was to target Jacques Kallis with lots of short stuff. Kallis has now faced lots and lots and lots of short stuff. Meanwhile, we dread to think how much verbal aggression Hashim Amla’s had to counter over the course of his 207-ball unbeaten innings. We imagine that verbal
Continue readingCategory: Australia
Brace yourselves – Australia have a dossier
< 1 minute read And it’s been leaked! We don’t really know what a dossier is. Is it just a piece of paper with a list on it? Whatever it is, it contains some staggering revelations: Australian bowlers are going to bowl some bouncers Australian cricketers are going to call an opponent names Apparently,
Continue readingAustralian cricketers need English balls
< 1 minute read Ambiguous headline, you say? Don’t know what you’re talking about. In their painfully desperate attempts to compete with England, Australia are going to use good, solid, dependable, manly Dukes balls in some Sheffield Shield matches instead of the fey, effeminate Kookaburra ball. The idea is that Aussie bowlers will maybe
Continue readingWhat did Matthew Hayden call Damien Martyn?
< 1 minute read Apparently Jimmy Anderson once hit Michael Clarke in the head with a pad because Clarke was being a knobhead. It’s a slightly disappointing story overall, but made faintly interesting by the subplots revolving around Damien Martyn. Apparently, Jimmy was sitting in the changing rooms and Michael Clarke was giving off
Continue readingPakistan’s spin bowling all-rounders exploit a weakness and the Twenty20 format
< 1 minute read Australia faced two overs of pace bowling during their defeat today. Pakistan captain Mohammad Hafeez saw that it was not broke and therefore declined the opportunity to attempt repairs. It’s interesting how a very specific batting weakness can be exploited in Twenty20. If spin causes some damage, the incoming batsmen
Continue readingWhat’s Damien Martyn up to these days?
< 1 minute read Yeah, we know Matthew Hayden’s retired again and that there’s a batch of nonsense to savour as a consequence. You can enjoy that without our having to contribute these days. Instead, we’ve got something new. It’s Damien Martyn’s confusingly named ‘Marton Distribution’. Read their ‘about us‘ page before you go
Continue readingCricket’s schadenfreude production line
2 minute read Congratulations, South Africa. Prepare for people to delight in your fall. In recent years, the Test rankings have been a kind of schadenfreude production line. One nation gets to the top and promptly celebrates and then everyone else celebrates even more heartily when the team in question drops down again.
Continue readingAustralia are planning for the Ashes
< 1 minute read No, seriously – they are. We were kind of hoping that planning would involve deciding precisely how many names to put in the selectorial hat followed by a lengthy debate about which hat to use, but they actually seem to be doing things properly. After picking a young one-day side
Continue readingWhy we liked Brett Lee
2 minute read Test bowling average v England: 40.61 – what’s not to like? Yes, it’s one of those weird statistics, but Brett Lee actually wasn’t all that destructive in the Ashes. There was theatre and tension every time he came onto bowl, but all that happened was that the batsman thought: “Ooh,
Continue readingRemember that England team that couldn’t bat, bowl or field
< 1 minute read Well if this Australia one-day side could run between the wickets, they’d be almost that good. Batting We’ve just got back from the ground, we watched the entire match and we’ve still no idea who the batsmen are. Clarke and Hussey, we guess. There’s also George Bailey who seems to
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