2 minute read This isn’t specifically about Joe Denly. He’s just the example. It’s about being a young English cricketer and what you have to do to play for the national side. It’s also about Australia’s wicketkeeper, Tim Paine. Paine and Denly are just starting their careers and have been opening the batting
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Why are England so bad at one-day cricket?
2 minute read You can come up with immediate reasons, like how badly they’ve been batting of late, but take a step back. Why are England so consistently bad at one-day cricket? We’ve been thinking about this a bit and our theory revolves around player rotation. One-day internationals, more than Test cricket, revolve
Continue readingEngland’s one-day all-rounders
< 1 minute read Are they going to win a game with the bat? Are they going to win a game with the ball? Luke Wright Dimitri Mascarenhas Tim Bresnan Adil Rashid There’s room for players who chip in, rather than deciding matches on their own, but there seem to be altogether too many
Continue readingGraeme Swann interviews
< 1 minute read You want Graeme Swann to be man of the match every time he plays, because he’s head and shoulders above everyone else in world cricket when it comes to the post-match interview. Today’s offering after a consolation win that followed six consecutive defeats: “Everyone talks about this big word ‘momentum’.
Continue readingHow bad is England’s one-day batting?
< 1 minute read Four fifties between them in six one-day internationals. That’s bad. Remember when you were at school and someone had egg sandwiches. ‘Ughh. Who’s got egg?’ someone would ask. Think of the faces everyone made when they realised someone had egg. There were probably even a few children crying, because having
Continue readingWhy Andrew Flintoff turned down a contract that would have prevented him from making almost painful amounts of cash
< 1 minute read It was because of the bungee clause. Flintoff’s agent, Andrew Chandler, explains why his client has turned down an incremental England contract which might have stopped him playing in the occasional lucrative Twenty20 tournament: “There were one or two things in it that made it difficult to sign like he
Continue readingEngland’s batting card and score
< 1 minute read It’s rare that a side scores 299 in a one-day international and yet has such an underwhelming batting card. Who got the runs? Somehow, it was no-one. To be fair, Eoin Morgan’s 58 off 41 balls was pretty eye-catching, but it still falls slightly short of significance somehow, particularly after
Continue readingLuke Wright is first victim of the machines
< 1 minute read We all knew it was going to happen. The machines have become self aware and they’re revolting against humanity. The odds were on some sort of Skynet style military computer being the first to turn against us, but fortunately it was actually something far less threatening. So instead of facing
Continue readingRavi Bopara is keen but not too keen
< 1 minute read He’s confident without being arrogant; humble without being meek; aggressive without being irresponsible; watchful without being bogged down. That’s what he’d say anyway. England’s cricketers know they have to say the right things and it’s painful to hear at times. They have to remain positive otherwise the media call them
Continue readingAn Ashes win equals big money
< 1 minute read You’re an England player. You’ve won the Ashes. You get in touch with your agent: “Commercial opportunities. What have you got for me?” Your agent’s silent a minute and you can hear him shuffling some papers on his desk. “Hello. Are you there? Commercial opportunities. What have you got?” Your
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