< 1 minute read The 2015 Ashes started with a hail of bouncers. Double-bouncers, triple-bouncers and a few outright grub-hunters. It was intimidating stuff from the perspective of an ankle – although the puddingness of the pitch did at least simplify things for the bowlers, allowing them to both pitch it short and hit
Continue readingCategory: England
It’s time for some new source material
< 1 minute read England’s players have been treated to an afternoon of Beefy rest day anecdotes, while Michael Clarke’s babbling on about ‘the line’ for the billionth time (“I think everyone knows where the line is,” he said this week – if not, we certainly know where we can hear about it). It’s
Continue readingWill England revert to steady cricket for the Ashes?
< 1 minute read A number of times this week, we’ve read people questioning whether England will be able to carry their positive approach from the one-day series against New Zealand into Tests. You would think so, being as that positive approach was carried into the one-day series from the preceding Tests in the
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 readingThe story of Matt Prior
3 minute read Perhaps it’s mankind’s predisposition towards seeing the world in terms of stories that has resulted in there being so much emphasis on the latter stages of Matt Prior’s career. Stories build towards an ending, so we tend to think that’s the most important bit. Such a way of looking at
Continue readingJoe Root becomes the context and goodbye to Ian Smith
2 minute read If we were tasked with producing a faceless match report for the Twenty20 international between England and New Zealand, we’d write: “Joe Root top-scored in an innings in which Jason Roy and Sam Billings showed great promise,” or something like that. Joe Root is not the focus there. He’s context.
Continue readingWas this the greatest ever one-day series decider?
< 1 minute read And is ‘number of wicketkeepers in squad’ the key metric when predicting the likelihood of success nowadays? Sod net practice, let’s get everyone squatting down with Bruce French for hours at a time. Who’s got a spare room? We’re starting to think we should invite New Zealand to move in.
Continue readingLangoustines? From England?
2 minute read We kept an eye on this one-day series between England and New Zealand while we were away, but we were rather too preoccupied eating squid to read as much about it as we normally would. It was therefore slightly odd to return to lots of articles of the oeuvre ‘is
Continue readingWhat do you want from your spinner? Control? Magic balls?
2 minute read Shortly before Adil Rashid bowled his ninth over in the first one-day international, the 28th of the innings, one of the Sky commentators said that captain Eoin Morgan would be delighted that he had ‘got through his overs’ by this early point. That’s the kind of banality you’ll often hear
Continue readingJos Buttler and Joe Root get the message
2 minute read Why, England, why? Why do you only now bat with no fear of consequences in this inconsequential one-day game? Why couldn’t you bat with no fear of consequences in the World Cup, back when there were consequences? That’s only partly jaded cynicism It’s mainly just our way of saying that
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