3 minute readEngland achieved a couple of things at Headingley. Most obviously, they won – but they also did so while compelling Jasprit Bumrah to bowl really quite a lot of overs. That’s an investment that might pay dividends later in the series. Unleashed! It’s easy being a really good batter because
Continue reading
2 minute readIt feels like Josh Tongue arrived for this match bang on eight hours late. But did he let prolonged abject non-contribution to his team’s cause dissuade him from bagging a hatful? No, for some reason, he did not. Tongue gleefully licked up rabbit pie, according to the peculiarly nauseating mime
Continue reading
3 minute readWe generally prefer to highlight less obvious moments, but this one seems a perfect synopsis of why this has already been a top rate Test. It was two uncanny cricketers with their own peculiar ways of going about things taking each other on within a match where you’re never quite
Continue reading
3 minute readEngland v India. Five Tests. Man alive, there’s scope for some stuff here. We’re only stopping at five with this article because if we send the email any later, you’ll all end up paying attention to THE WRONG THINGS and we’d never forgive ourself. Rishabh Pant v Shoaib Bashir In
Continue reading
4 minute readEngland’s three-match T20 series against the West Indies starts tonight, which means that 90% of recent news has been about the Test series that follows. England named their Test squad, you see – because they didn’t feel doing that would confuse people at all. It’s noteworthy that, in this country
Continue reading
2 minute readWe’re not at all in Rubel Hossain territory here, but we’re pretty sure India just became a better Test team with Virat Kohli’s retirement. He was no longer the Test cricketer he once was. In fact he was essentially John Crawley. When it comes to middle-order batters, India can definitely
Continue reading
2 minute readNo, not really. It’s the tone of irreverent escapism, you see. This gets us through a lot of things, but it takes on a very different hue when it’s applied to a situation where people are actually dying. We went to the India-Pakistan border once. It was 20-odd years ago
Continue reading
3 minute readThey called him Nohit, they called him Hitman – honestly, just make your bloody minds up. When a specialist batter’s feted for the central act of hitting the ball, but also infamous for completely failing to do so, you know he’s covered a bit of ground over the course of
Continue reading
4 minute readIf there’s one thing you can count on with IPL tactical trends, it’s that by the time you’ve written about one, it’s gone back the other way. We can’t really remember any particular period when the perceived value of a wicketkeeper largely hinged on his wicketkeeping though, which is where
Continue reading
2 minute readThe danger with the Champions Trophy has always been that people might look upon the celebration photos in years to come and think, “Wait, these guys didn’t win a World Cup, did they? What the hell was this?” Someone, somewhere, therefore came up with idea of forcing the winners to
Continue reading