< 1 minute read Last week we suggested that the adaptability of Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali was a key reason why they had become yo-yos for England. There are two sides to this. Firstly, the fact that the two men can each perform so many ‘roles’ means that Test openings materialise more frequently
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3 minute read If there’s one thing we know about yo-yos, it’s that if you send one out, it tends to come back. If we know another thing about yo-yos, it’s that sometimes they get all tangled when they’re fully extended and don’t actually come back and then you have to spend ages
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3 minute read Starts are important. Starts set everyone’s mood and so shape everything that’s to come. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Abattoir Blues album starts with two bars that sound like the climax of an encore. Nick then forcefully instructs us to, ‘get ready for love,’ and by 12 seconds, there’s
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3 minute read James Anderson took two wickets in his 11th over of the first Test: Cheteshwar Pujara for 4 and Virat Kohli for 0. Both are great and significant batsmen and if our maths is correct – and no guarantees on this one, people – there is only a four-run difference between
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3 minute read Well India are great and England seem massively out of their depth. So what are we left with? Let’s compare ducks. Four ducks in an innings. That’s a thing now, apparently. Cricinfo’s George Dobell says it’s the third time it’s happened to England in their last five Tests. That’s… a
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3 minute read England are about to play Test matches against India. Maybe we’ll just concentrate on that for a bit. We don’t know about you, but these last few weeks have sapped our enthusiasm a bit. It’s not the Hundred itself, which is flawed and a bit silly, but still fundamentally cricket.
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< 1 minute read We’ve done a special Ridiculous Ashes podcast about Michael Clarke stemming from our coverage of the 2013/14 series. We got writer, broadcaster and podcaster Adam Collins on to help us because he knows more about Michael Clarke than we do. We never really ‘got’ Michael Clarke. The thing that baffled
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2 minute read In a world where every shot that drops just over the rope is MASSIVE and the ones that get caught by spectators sitting in the first row are OUT OF THE GROUND, it becomes quite hard to properly acknowledge the shot played by Liam Livingstone off Pakistan’s Haris Rauf at
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4 minute read Piss off golf. It is a phenomenon we will never be able to wrap our head around. Cricketers liking and talking about golf. No offence to golf – which is a perfectly decent sport if you want to fake-befriend late-middle-aged men who have the power to give you a promotion
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6 minute read 2019 Cricket World Cup final, England v New Zealand Cricket is at its very purest and best when it’s completely village; when the bowlers are batting and people are being run-out and everyone has to keep checking the laws and playing regulations because they don’t have the faintest idea what’s
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