2 minute readSam writes: My shelves are groaning under the weight of cricket autobiographies. The best – among them Coming Back To Me by Marcus Trescothick and Nasser Hussain’s Playing With Fire – are well-thumbed. The others tend to blur together. Tales of pushy parents, age group potential, Test debuts and tearful
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What is the cost of a drop? Are ‘chances’ a better way to measure bowlers and wicketkeepers?
2 minute readThe Cricket Monthly has a wonderful article on how dropped catches impact a Test. It’s a fascinating subject for how poorly it’s currently understood. Two of our favourite facts from the article are: That Wavell Hinds was once dropped twice en route to a duck – surely a candidate for
Continue readingMiddlesex v Warwickshire match report
2 minute readBalladeer writes: One of the few things I knew was vital was preparation. One doesn’t just take any old food to The Home of Cricket. So I pondered my options. Waitrose? M&S? Selfridges, for the extra touch of privately educated class? Alas, I also had to pick up some washing
Continue readingMop-up of the day – Sweet, sour, bitter, savoury
2 minute readA bitter-sweet mop-up of the day today, like someone’s spilt a honey-and-lemon sore throat remedy. Actually, maybe that’s sweet and sour. A sour-sweet mop-up of the day today. Sour James Anderson is out of England’s tour of Bangladesh and probably won’t be back until halfway through the India tour. No
Continue readingA cricket bat in a real tennis place
< 1 minute readGed writes: I know what you are thinking, dear reader: “That real tennis workshop must be at Lord’s; how can Lord’s be an unusual place to see a cricket bat?” Well I’m here to tell you that the real tennis area at Lord’s is a relentlessly cricket equipment free zone.
Continue readingThis is not about the England squad for the Bangladesh tour
< 1 minute readWe can’t remember what time our own email goes out. Is it 11am? We could just check the timestamp on an old one, we suppose – but who’s honestly got time to do that? We suspect it’s actually 10am, but on the offchance it’s an hour later, here’s a link
Continue readingI Don’t Like Cricket, I Hate It – the city-based T20 edition
3 minute readA semi-regular feature in which we ask Prince Prefab about cricket – even though he hates cricket. We are in bold. Prince Prefab is not. We were talking about fat cricketers last time around. It was pointed out to us that the team that won this year’s T20 competition ‘likes
Continue readingI Don’t Like Cricket, I Hate It – county attendances and world record scores
2 minute readA semi-regular feature in which we ask Prince Prefab about cricket – even though he hates cricket. As we speak, the team in first place in the County Championship has played 12 matches, won four and drawn eight. What do you make of that? I know what you’re trying to
Continue readingA quite possibly harrowing development involving a car number plate
< 1 minute readBert writes: It’s been months now since The Revered One departed this plane of existence and ascended to the Sky (Sports studio). Such elevation cannot but affect a man, but I must say I had thought that Robert the Great would be immune, that he would be able to maintain
Continue readingA new low for cricket – a new low for the world
< 1 minute readThis represents so much of what’s wrong with the world. England organise a penalty shoot out before a nets session #eng #EngvsPak ???? @jwsportsphoto – https://t.co/q9QOEDst5Y pic.twitter.com/Ojdiv2HJUE — PA Images (@PAImages) August 26, 2016 You can’t even see the full horror from that. We saw it because it had been
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