< 1 minute read Our proper Jonathan Trott retirement piece is over on All Out Cricket. Other than that, here are two old posts which sum up different aspects of a top, top player. The first focuses on the sheer relentlessness of the man – surely his defining quality. If we have a happier
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Why wasn’t Captain Hindsight made England coach for this series?
3 minute read We can’t understand it. It seems such an obvious solution. Captain Hindsight wouldn’t have made all the obvious mistakes that Peter Moores made. Maybe England’s loss would have been embarrassing if the opposition had been as mediocre as they were infamously branded, but this West Indies side seemed to us
Continue readingTest action constriction and the case for a James Anderson ghola
< 1 minute read Wickets advance a Test match. Yesterday therefore had all the meaningful action of two days’ cricket – 18 wickets – constricted into one. Jerome Taylor kicked things off, but it was Jimmy Anderson who enjoyed himself to the full with six wickets for 42 runs off 12.4 overs. In the
Continue readingAlastair Cook hasn’t made a hundred since yesterday
< 1 minute read Restart the clock. This may have been all of 10 runs more than he made just a handful of Tests ago, but it rewrites a tired script. Suddenly people can’t fall back on ‘hasn’t made a hundred since…’ and so they’re instead forced to look at the facts. Those facts
Continue readingWhen is an England squad not an England squad?
2 minute read This is probably the weirdest England squad we can remember. It’s not quite a B-team, but nor is it a real A-Team. It’s a 2010 cinematic rehash A-Team. Some of the names are about as familiar as that of Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson as well (the guy who was passed off
Continue readingJimmy Anderson makes a delicious omelette
2 minute read We stand by everything we said yesterday. We never said England lacked eggs, only baskets. There have always been plenty of oeufs in the new ball basket and Jimmy Anderson is adept at using them. Take three wickets for one run and additional receptacles seem superfluous – particularly if you
Continue readingThe pitch may well be unacceptable…
< 1 minute read But complaining about it is even more unacceptable. If England didn’t have quite so many eggs in the basket marked ‘steady accuracy’ things might be rather different. A truly fast bowler would be nice. A leg-spinner going for runs but making the occasional breakthrough would be handy. A bit more
Continue readingJoe Root makes a hundred on The Day of Inevitable Fifties
2 minute read For a while it seemed as if no-one would make it all the way – even if it had felt inevitable that several of them would get halfway. Trott was out for 59, Cook for 76 and then Ballance for 77. They were creeping closer and it was Root who
Continue readingStuart Broad has left the building
2 minute read Or at least last week’s Stuart Broad has. Everyone get their stuff so we can move somewhere else lest he returns and finds us again. We did suggest in the comments to that piece that the real Slim Stuart might again stand up. He had bowled a handful of quicker
Continue readingWest Indies v England, second Test, day one – anger and amazement
< 1 minute read It’s been a long time since we reduced the broad spectrum of human emotion down to either anger or amazement. Let’s bring back that flawless rating system to assess various aspects of day one of the second Test. Angry England’s bowling attack. We’re perfectly happy about the return of Bowling
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