< 1 minute readFaf du Plessis is a competitor. That’s the kind of thing people say. It’s a shorthand way of saying that he only seems capable of playing to his full potential when there’s a stronger taste of conflict to proceedings. Performing in what is never called the crucible of county cricket,
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Australia should probably stop doctoring their own pitches
< 1 minute readPlaying Australia is like playing Jenga with a house of cards when each of the cards is drunk. Before they played Sri Lanka, David Warner spoke of batting “well into the next day” but the team repeatedly folded as if prepared by Miura. Against South Africa at the Waca, they
Continue readingAustralia fold like junk mail
2 minute readAny batting side can fold like a Bargain Booze leaflet pushed through the door, but it takes a certain amount of preparation to do this when it’s really expected of you. Confronted with a robust hard-to-open letterbox, Australia crumpled impressively. We watched the first six overs of their 85 all
Continue readingBrad Hogg shoved vitamin C up his jacksie – and there are still some unanswered questions about the story
< 1 minute readAnother day, another pre-Christmas autobiography by a gnarly old Australian cricketer. Brad Hogg’s The Wrong ‘Un surely warrants a mention though, if only for the anecdote about when Steve Waugh tricked him into thinking that some vitamin C pills needed to be inserted into his outbox. The story itself has
Continue readingMop-up of the day – Batting collapses don’t just come against spin, apparently
2 minute readA true collapse comes after a start. Throwing a load of Lego bricks over the floor is just a mess; putting them together to build some sort of tower before watching it keel over – that’s a collapse. Like England last week, Australia took the time to set the scene.
Continue readingAn Australia team versus a South Africa team – this time it’s international cricket
2 minute readThe main thing we take from day one of the first Test between Australia and South Africa is that the five one-dayers they played in South Africa recently weren’t proper international matches and so they probably shouldn’t have bothered. Australia’s bowling attack for those matches was a recurring theme in
Continue readingWhat the use of Mitchell Johnson’s head as a toilet brush says about the Australia cricket team
< 1 minute readIt’s increasingly fashionable for captains and coaches to talk about building culture within their team – shared values and working together and all that crap. Mitchell Johnson’s autobiography, Resilient, features a colourful anecdote from his time at the Cricket Academy in Adelaide which sheds light on every aspect of the
Continue readingWhy has no-one asked Jonathan Trott’s mum how we can stamp out match-fixing?
2 minute readWe don’t normally report on excerpts from cricket autobiographies because, you know, read the book. We have to make an exception for this majestic exchange from Jonathan Trott’s Unguarded though. (We haven’t read it, but he wrote it with George Dobell, so we’re pretty confident it’s excellent.) After Pakistan Cricket
Continue readingAustralia’s pace bowling has weakness in depth
< 1 minute readMitchell Starc is injured, James Faulkner is injured, Nathan Coulter-Nile is injured, Pat Cummins is injured, James Pattinson is injured and Josh Hazlewood is being rested in case he gets injured. The way things are going, he’ll probably end up missing the next Test with bedsores. Australia coach Darren Lehmann
Continue readingShaun Marsh and his duck tax
< 1 minute readIt’s common for people to ask: if Shaun Marsh is the answer, what is the question? As often as not, the question is “who’s the selectorial equivalent of a last desperate roll of the dice?” Australia have not been making runs in Sri Lanka. In the first two Tests their
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