< 1 minute read It’s okay. Panic over. England are once again the greatest team in history. That whole ‘going for five an over’ bowling performance is over and the England batting machine is running perfectly. The second day’s play saw England intimidate the Western Australia Chairman’s XI into declaring at 451-5, batsmen eight,
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We’re lying about the Ashes already
< 1 minute read But only by accident. Yesterday we wrote about the reception England used to get upon arriving Australia for Cricinfo; how they’d be rubbished in print and beaten in the warm-up matches. Our point was that this didn’t happen any more. But lo, England have had quite an embarrassing day against
Continue readingAlastair Cook’s back
< 1 minute read Apparently Alastair Cook developed a bad back while flying. This is an ability we didn’t know he had. Those who have been fortunate enough to witness an airborne Cook say he spurns dramatic swoops in favour of steady progress at a consistent altitude and that when bad weather is forecast,
Continue readingSteve Harmison retires – a tribute to the lolloping ganglatron of mental fragility
3 minute read Odd that it should be Simon Jones who’s last man standing from that 2005 Ashes-winning bowling attack. Ashley Giles retired so long ago we wrote about it on a different web domain, Matthew Hoggard retired last month and while we saw Andrew Flintoff in Didsbury yesterday looking fitter than he
Continue readingWeather forecast for the first Ashes Test at Brisbane
< 1 minute read Cricinfo is meteorologically ahead of the game. “Clarke under cloud for Brisbane Test” Clearly England should do away with Tremlett, Finn and Rankin and replace them with Mark Ealham, Mike Watkinson and Alan Igglesden to take advantage of overhead conditions. Yes, we have been reduced to this. What of it?
Continue readingCounty Championship 2013 – statistical epilogue
< 1 minute read Cricket fans adore statistics. For most of you, the sport itself is just a convenient means of generating data. Numbers are your true love. Here are some. Most runs Gary Ballance (Yorkshire) – 1,251 Wayne Madsen (Derbyshire) – 1,221 Sam Robson (Middlesex) – 1,180 Best batting averages (at least 10
Continue readingWe wait on the Buttler
< 1 minute read If you report on player transfers before they’ve been confirmed, you’re starting out on a slippery slope. Next thing you know, you’ve got a section of your website called ‘transfer gossip’ which wastes people’s time telling them about things which won’t happen. We’re not sure exactly where we’re up to
Continue readingEngland include a man called Gary Ballance in their Ashes squad
2 minute read That’s what we think of you, punsome headlines. No way. No effing way. We might indulge in an opaque vertigo reference should Gary Ballance later get dropped, but that’s as much as you’re getting. So, the England squad then? You knew most of it anyway. These are the other bits.
Continue readingThe international summer is over
< 1 minute read It went out with a bang, on a cold, damp, September evening with the run-rate slowly climbing beyond being chaseable and a few drunk people chanting discordantly at a handful of lower-order England batsmen most of them hadn’t really heard of. Even watching on TV, it felt a bit like
Continue readingWhy I want Jos Buttler to pretty much just do what he’s doing for the time being
< 1 minute read We’ve mentioned before that Jos Buttler would always be in our International Cricket Captain one-day team. At least he would be if we actually played the game any more. That might not sound like a particularly resounding vote of confidence, but it really is. We’d go so far as to
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