2 minute readWe believe every international cricket team should be issued with at least one superhero. It keeps things interesting. In the years leading up to the creation of this website, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the standard of Test cricket was pretty variable. There were – as there always are
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< 1 minute readYou’ve no doubt seen the shocking news that Shane Warne’s died. This is by no means the first gasp he’s induced from us, but it’s by far the least welcome. We will, of course, write something longer in due course, but for now we just want to acknowledge what a
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2 minute readAccording to the rankings, Australia are the number one men’s Test team. They also have the number one batter (Marnus Labuschagne) and number one bowler (Pat Cummins). They’ve achieved this without playing a single match away from home since 2019. Now Australia are in Pakistan of all places. Pakistan, where
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2 minute readGod this is complicated. There’s been a Michael Vaughan-fuelled brouhaha in Australia this week about how a bunch of Australia players had a conversation about Justin Langer in a pub. Speaking on Fox Cricket’s Follow-On podcast, Vaughan said that two English journalists were sitting in a pub in Hobart and
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< 1 minute readJustin Langer resigned as Australia coach a couple of days ago. Today we completely and utterly misread a headline about him. It’s not that we got the words wrong. We saw the correct words. It’s just that seeing the headline the day after the article was published, we attributed a
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2 minute readThere aren’t many women’s Test matches at all. This means that the worst thing to produce when there is one would be a one-sided boreathon. The 2022 Ashes Test was most definitely not that. It served up almost as many plot twists as Wild Things (a film that averages one
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2 minute readIt’s the Ashes again. Australia won again. Oh shit? If we have a recent sports writing regret, it’s that we only stumbled across the terms MAshes and WAshes after the men’s series had already finished. We very much like this terminology. We wish we’d already started using it. Because it’s
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2 minute readEngland’s batting average in this series was the lowest in an Ashes series since 1890. Mitchell Starc opened the bowling against them in all five Tests, yet it doesn’t feel like he’ll get his fair share of the credit. We often think this about Starc. Is that fair? A certain
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2 minute readWell that was bad, wasn’t it? Unless you’re Australian, in which case that was great, wasn’t it? For a bit. And then maybe not so much. Maybe just a bit hollow by the end. But still slightly great because, you know, residual sense of the Ashes’ importance still. Just about.
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3 minute readThere is no right answer when it comes to England’s Test team selection right now. But there are different types of odd decision. The omission of a spinner for a day/night Test is the most predictable one. England picked five right-arm fast-medium bowlers and no spinner for the day/night Test
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