2 minute readEngland always say they want competition for places, but whenever they actually have it, everyone gets all impatient and demands that they hurry up and make the change right now. Somerset’s James Rew will wind up in England’s Test team eventually. Is there any harm in waiting for the right
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3 minute readA fortnight into the County Championship and it’s hard to weigh the performances of several England Test hopefuls. In many cases who they play for seems to have had almost as much influence on outcomes as how they’re playing. Take, for example, Jamie Smith. This time last week we pointed
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3 minute readJamie Smith earned himself a mention in our previous article about which England Test players might get the boot for the next Test. We had him down as someone who’d need to play very badly in early season to lose his place, so a match-saving 132 for Surrey presumably keeps
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5 minute readWe are absolutely adamant that England cannot possibly withstand public and media appetite for change in the wake of the Ashes drubbing. (Does 4-1 actually qualify as a drubbing given the three previous scorelines Down Under were all worse than that?) One way or another, rightly or wrongly, action must
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3 minute read“In terms of skulls… how many skulls? Do you think?” There are plenty of England fans and a good few in the cricket press who have a Tom Wambsgans-esque appetite for skulls right now. England lost the Ashes and no-one has been sacked. It’s an unusual scenario. The boring story
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6 minute readTop level cricketers really care about what they do. Caring is the basic fuel for their careers. But whether it’s an Iranian gasfield, a Tesla Cybertruck battery or merely the giving of shits, sometimes fuel can also finish you. Part of an international coach’s job is therefore to protect players
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3 minute readThe ECB briefly banned all players with England central contracts from speaking to the media this week. What did they think would happen? Did they honestly expect one of them to say something interesting? The ban’s since been lifted – probably on the basis that its mere existence made the
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3 minute readUnder Matthew Mott, England were very bad at the 2023 World Cup, then made the semi-finals of the 2024 T20 World Cup, where they lost to India. Under Brendon McCullum, they were very bad at the 2025 Champions Trophy, then made the semi-finals of the 2026 T20 World Cup, where
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2 minute readAll right you primitive screwheads, listen up. We honestly aren’t all that interested in T20 cricketers who aren’t Jasprit Bumrah any more. It’s a cliché to call bowlers cannon fodder in this format, but we’ve reached a point now where really it’s the batters who are the unchanging nondescript wallpaper.
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3 minute readWe feel like we’ve read this sentence, or one very much like it, almost daily for the last few weeks. If you hadn’t noticed, Jos Buttler hasn’t been scoring too many runs. He’s apparently tried to correct this with more and more practice. Is this the right approach? If you’d
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