< 1 minute readEven now, people often ask us to write about Matthew Hayden. We never do. Partly it’s that Hayden has retired and is therefore no longer ‘a target’. Mostly it’s just that we don’t like doing what people ask us to do. With that in mind, we’d like to emphasise that
Continue readingCategory: Australia
Shane Watson v England
< 1 minute readAustralia might have had a better chance in the first Twenty20 international if 10 of them hadn’t been shit. The 11th player, Shane Watson, has suddenly found a world where hitting fifties and bowling straight medium-pace is quite handy. If he’d have found a competent team mate, Australia would have
Continue readingAnother reason why Australia lost the Ashes
< 1 minute readBeer sales are down. Moisturiser sales are through the roof. The metrosexualisation of Australian society has damaged the cricket team immeasurably. No-one eats steak any more; they all eat scallops in an Indonesian-style jus. When Simon Katich isn’t in Sydney, male body hair in the city is down by a
Continue readingCake having and eating
< 1 minute readMost of us find that part of the joy of cricket is that there’s always something to talk about. When a match is in the balance, you can pick it apart for hours trying to work out which team’s more likely to win. In the past, we’ve also found it
Continue readingScoring at four an over in Tests
< 1 minute readOnce upon a time, Australian batsmen averaging in the forties would be in danger of being given the boot if they couldn’t score at four an over. Just saying. In truth, Australia were wise not to let their bats stray too far from the stumps for most of yesterday’s play,
Continue readingAustralia’s fast bowlers in the 2010 Ashes
2 minute readYou can ask any England fan what qualities a bowling attack needs to bowl the opposition out in Australia. We all know. You need as many as possible of the following: Extreme pace Freakishly tall bowlers Mystery spin Reverse swing How many of those can you find in the current
Continue readingAustralia’s batsmen in the 2010 Ashes
2 minute readLet us say that we don’t actually think that Australia’s batsmen are all that bad. They are good players playing badly, which is slightly different. Batsmen under pressure are exposed more than bowlers because they don’t get second chances. You do something stupid that gets you out and that’s your
Continue readingAustralia’s captain and spinners
2 minute readThe more we think about it, the more these two things go hand-in-hand. The situation was this. Nathan Hauritz got the boot because he got wellied in India like just about every other spinner who ever goes over there. Demented selections ensued. Maybe Hauritz offended Ricky Ponting by suggesting that
Continue readingAustralia’s Ashes team – an English perspective on what went wrong
< 1 minute readAs an Englishman in his thirties, there’s nothing we don’t know about pointing out a team’s flaws after it’s failed to win the Ashes. Might as well put our skills to more joyous use this year. Today, captaincy and spin bowling. Tomorrow, batting and pace bowling.
Continue readingRicky Ponting talking to the umpires
< 1 minute readWhinging Poms? Has the world ever seen a whingier cricketer than Ricky Thomas Ponting? Sport needs a bit of ‘us and them’ so that you can enjoy it properly, so it was perversely enjoyable to see Ponting spend three-quarters of an hour bending Aleem Dar’s ear. As he stamped his
Continue reading