< 1 minute readWe’re all for the ebb and flow of Test cricket with all its nuance and scope for recovery, but all in all we’d much rather see Australia being bowled out for 60 in the span of time normally reserved for a football match. There’s a cycling commentator who routinely uses
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Duke balls, five-day pitches and the final Test of the summer
2 minute readMike Selvey has written a nice piece about balls. The word ‘caresser’ is used at one point. He is, of course, writing about Dukes balls, the cricket ball used in England which swings for way longer than the crappy, inferior Kookaburra ball. It has a bigger seam too. It’s a
Continue readingShane Warne and friends – the painting
< 1 minute readShane Warne left an important part of his brain somewhere on a cricket field in Hampshire. It’s the part that stops you doing things that your 11-year-old self would have thought a good idea. Here he is describing a painting he had commissioned. Here’s the painting itself. We’d love to
Continue readingRangana Herath is embraced by a grateful planet
< 1 minute readYou’ve got to hand it to us, we can call matches incorrectly with the worst of them. Almost as if they were goaded into it, Sri Lanka have done everything in their power to make our assessment of them the day before yesterday seem almost criminally inaccurate. We called them
Continue readingWhy has no-one made fun of Darren Lehmann for that ‘hiccup’ comment?
< 1 minute readThe thing about hiccups is that they almost always come as a plural. You might cough once, you can get away with a single sneeze, but hiccups arrive en masse. As such, Darren Lehmann’s description of the Cardiff Test as ‘a minor hiccup’ seems entirely fitting. Far from being symptomatic
Continue readingDid England just win the 2015 Ashes?
< 1 minute readThey completely did. They fully did. What do you make of that? And as a bonus talking point, Michael Clarke seems likely to retire at the end of the series. We presume he’s only waiting that long lest Steven Smith feel the pressure to follow suit immediately after leading the
Continue readingDavid Warner’s short-armed jab
2 minute readNot the one from Walkabout, but the weird, pathetic quasi-pull shot he plays when he gets a short ball with two men on the fence. The one that’s twice cost him his wicket in this series and which near enough got him out on the two or three other occasions
Continue readingA homogenous batting line-up with the same strengths and weaknesses
3 minute readThis is the closest representation of Australia’s innings we can find. But why? Why would men whose job it is to bat – and who have been selected because they are supposedly the best at that task – repeatedly try and edge balls that weren’t going on to hit the
Continue readingStuart Broad tears Australia a new one
< 1 minute readEarly wickets are always key and with his 19th delivery, Stuart Broad struck. Of course he already had four wickets by that point and it didn’t take him too much longer to pick up another three. Was it a rain delay? Were these actually just highlights? No, because rain delays
Continue readingThe latest Ian Bell update has been released and it’s full of bugs and new features
< 1 minute readWe’re way past Ian Bell 2.0. Being as he’s 33 and batting at three, we’re going to call this incarnation Ian Bell 33.3. Hopefully that won’t prove to be its batting average. Most of the previous Ian Bells have looked solid only to get out in infuriating fashion when you
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