< 1 minute read If bowlers didn’t require torsos, Sussex might have been all right. Side strains, pectoral injuries and dodgy spines meant that Chris Jordan played six matches, Ajmal Shahzad played five and Tymal Mills just two. It’s hard to win much without your pace attack and relegation has ensued. If they can
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A straightforward easy-to-follow climax to the County Championship
< 1 minute read No, really. No totting up bonus points in matches you had assumed were irrelevant. No poring over the rules to find out when exactly those bonus points are earned. No keeping track of all of this across three different matches. For once, it’s simple. Unless we’ve missed something (highly likely)
Continue readingIn the cold September rain
< 1 minute read Apparently it’s been slatting it down all day in the South-East. Bad news for Surrey, who are pushing to become second division ‘champions’ in one of the few matters left unresolved this domestic season. We use inverted commas around ‘champions’ in much the same way as if we were saying
Continue readingGeraint Jones slashes to great effect
< 1 minute read If, as a cricketer, you’re going to be remembered for just one moment, you might as well make that moment the climax of the most exciting passage of sport many of us will ever see. Even if it wasn’t the hardest catch, for safely taking it England fans will forever
Continue readingYorkshire take the second of a hat-trick of County Championship titles
2 minute read It’s oddly reassuring that Yorkshire should win the title again. It provides the kind of clarity that is rarely seen in English domestic cricket. We can state with some conviction that they are the strongest county at the minute – stronger even than Herefordshire. When a team does well one
Continue readingPromotion day in the County Championship
< 1 minute read There are still two matches to go in the second division of the County Championship, but somehow we already know both the counties who will be promoted. What this basically means is that the other seven teams in that division were sufficiently crap that they failed by a distance. There
Continue readingTwenty20 Finals Day doesn’t always scream ‘elite sporting event’
2 minute read Last year, we took Birmingham’s appearance in place of Warwickshire in the T20 Blast as being a watertight scientific experiment into whether a future of city teams would lead to better cricket. Birmingham won the tournament, seemingly proving that it would, although the findings were somewhat compromised by their sickening
Continue readingRemember Tim Bresnan?
2 minute read Of course you do. He played for England as recently as last month (against Ireland – what do you mean you don’t remember?). But do you remember what he was? You probably remember Tim Bresnan as a diligent and accurate third seamer, but once upon a time he was an
Continue readingGlen Chapple is playing cricket and pretending he’s not great at it
< 1 minute read So we’re calling him out on it. For every Shivnarine Chanderpaul, trying to convince people he’s still got it at the age of 40, there’s a Glen Chapple, sidling into a coaching position and inexplicably trying to convince everyone that he hasn’t still got it. Chapple’s not fooling anyone. >
Continue readingLeicestershire complete their sentence
< 1 minute read At some point in 2013, Leicestershire were cut by the thunder. From then on, draws and losses appeared to be the only possible outcomes following four days of championship cricket. That’s a dispiriting world in which to live, sounding almost like something imposed on them by a judge. However, the
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