< 1 minute readAustralia faced two overs of pace bowling during their defeat today. Pakistan captain Mohammad Hafeez saw that it was not broke and therefore declined the opportunity to attempt repairs. It’s interesting how a very specific batting weakness can be exploited in Twenty20. If spin causes some damage, the incoming batsmen
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What’s Damien Martyn up to these days?
< 1 minute readYeah, we know Matthew Hayden’s retired again and that there’s a batch of nonsense to savour as a consequence. You can enjoy that without our having to contribute these days. Instead, we’ve got something new. It’s Damien Martyn’s confusingly named ‘Marton Distribution’. Read their ‘about us‘ page before you go
Continue readingCricket’s schadenfreude production line
2 minute readCongratulations, South Africa. Prepare for people to delight in your fall. In recent years, the Test rankings have been a kind of schadenfreude production line. One nation gets to the top and promptly celebrates and then everyone else celebrates even more heartily when the team in question drops down again.
Continue readingAustralia are planning for the Ashes
< 1 minute readNo, seriously – they are. We were kind of hoping that planning would involve deciding precisely how many names to put in the selectorial hat followed by a lengthy debate about which hat to use, but they actually seem to be doing things properly. After picking a young one-day side
Continue readingWhy we liked Brett Lee
2 minute readTest bowling average v England: 40.61 – what’s not to like? Yes, it’s one of those weird statistics, but Brett Lee actually wasn’t all that destructive in the Ashes. There was theatre and tension every time he came onto bowl, but all that happened was that the batsman thought: “Ooh,
Continue readingRemember that England team that couldn’t bat, bowl or field
< 1 minute readWell if this Australia one-day side could run between the wickets, they’d be almost that good. Batting We’ve just got back from the ground, we watched the entire match and we’ve still no idea who the batsmen are. Clarke and Hussey, we guess. There’s also George Bailey who seems to
Continue readingEngland aren’t the best one-day side but neither are Australia
< 1 minute readA 5-0 win for England in this one-day series would have sent them to the top of the one-day rankings. That would have been as anomalous as “multi-coloured sweets in white sweet pack” to needlessly quote The Fall’s Mark E Smith. That line appears in a song called The Joke,
Continue readingAustralian selector says the batsmen are rubbish
< 1 minute readWell, you know, reading between the lines and joining the dots and making the odd leap and adding a few extra dots – that’s basically what he’s said. John Inverarity’s comments include gems such as: “They’re the best we’ve got.” Which we like to imagine being delivered with a laissez-faire
Continue readingAustralia strike back but England strike back back
< 1 minute readEngland got in an early blow ahead of all those Ashes serieses the day before yesterday when Australia selected Steven Smith to bat at six. However, the Aussies have now struck back through not selecting Steven Smith at all. Undeterred, England reacted swiftly and once again hold the advantage after
Continue readingEngland land early blow ahead of all those Asheses
< 1 minute readEngland today landed a massive blow ahead of all the millions of Asheses that are going to be played over the next few years. This blow will have sent shockwaves through the whole of Australia. The monumentally significant moment came when Australia named their team and revealed that Steven Smith
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