2 minute read God this is complicated. There’s been a Michael Vaughan-fuelled brouhaha in Australia this week about how a bunch of Australia players had a conversation about Justin Langer in a pub. Speaking on Fox Cricket’s Follow-On podcast, Vaughan said that two English journalists were sitting in a pub in Hobart and
Continue readingCategory: Australia
Elite intensity: How to misread a Justin Langer headline
< 1 minute read Justin Langer resigned as Australia coach a couple of days ago. Today we completely and utterly misread a headline about him. It’s not that we got the words wrong. We saw the correct words. It’s just that seeing the headline the day after the article was published, we attributed a
Continue readingThe Test match when no-one wanted to be on top (except maybe Heather Knight)
2 minute read There aren’t many women’s Test matches at all. This means that the worst thing to produce when there is one would be a one-sided boreathon. The 2022 Ashes Test was most definitely not that. It served up almost as many plot twists as Wild Things (a film that averages one
Continue readingAs another Ashes series gets underway, please tell us we aren’t in “oh shit” territory again already
2 minute read It’s the Ashes again. Australia won again. Oh shit? If we have a recent sports writing regret, it’s that we only stumbled across the terms MAshes and WAshes after the men’s series had already finished. We very much like this terminology. We wish we’d already started using it. Because it’s
Continue readingIt’s worth reminding yourself that Mitchell Starc really does have an awful lot going for him
2 minute read England’s batting average in this series was the lowest in an Ashes series since 1890. Mitchell Starc opened the bowling against them in all five Tests, yet it doesn’t feel like he’ll get his fair share of the credit. We often think this about Starc. Is that fair? A certain
Continue readingHere are the only four cricket things we can immediately think of that are worse than England’s 2021/22 Ashes campaign
2 minute read Well that was bad, wasn’t it? Unless you’re Australian, in which case that was great, wasn’t it? For a bit. And then maybe not so much. Maybe just a bit hollow by the end. But still slightly great because, you know, residual sense of the Ashes’ importance still. Just about.
Continue readingChris Woakes with the old ball, Mark Wood for his third Test in three weeks – dissecting England’s latest omission of a spinner for a day/night Test match
3 minute read There is no right answer when it comes to England’s Test team selection right now. But there are different types of odd decision. The omission of a spinner for a day/night Test is the most predictable one. England picked five right-arm fast-medium bowlers and no spinner for the day/night Test
Continue readingIn praise of the tense final hour of a drawn Test match
2 minute read We’ve said it many times before. Test cricket can offer something that no other sport can. You can’t have a tense hour in a football match because it’s two thirds of the game. In a Test match, 60 minutes can be a tight finish. In a five-day match, everyone’s got
Continue readingIt’s been so long since Jonny Bairstow made a Test hundred he almost forgot to roar
2 minute read One of our favourite things about Jonny Bairstow Test hundreds – second only to their existence really – is how he celebrates them. Jonny Bairstow is a pretty fiery hundred-celebrator. Before today, the last time Bairstow made a Test ton was in November 2018 in Sri Lanka. On that occasion
Continue reading17 of the best, worst and weirdest cricket moments of 2021
7 minute read Here is a bunch of stuff that happened in 2021. It is not an exhaustive list, because an exhaustive list chronicling the activities of multiple people across an entire year would take far longer than a year to read. It is just a selection of striking cricket moments from the
Continue reading