4 minute readMatt Renshaw, James Hildreth, Ollie Pope and Sam Northeast: four centurions in an April where wickets have arrived as frequently as buses on Manchester’s Oxford Road. Clearly we’re talking about all four of them. But let’s say we’re pressed for time and can only talk about one. Who should that
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“The other 10 balls will add a fresh tactical dimension”
2 minute read Of all the very many sizeable questions that arise from the ECB’s plan to introduce a new 100-ball format to cricket, the biggest one is surely this: how did they decide who had to have the “fresh tactical dimension” quote attributed to them? To quickly bring you up to
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Olly Stone is who we’re talking about this week
2 minute readWarwickshire’s Olly Stone bowled a bouncer and on the strength of that became the county player everyone’s talking about this week. In the 18th over, Stone dismissed Luke Wells and then the very next ball he bounced out Luke Wright. If you play for Sussex and you are a Luke
Continue readingI Don’t Like Cricket, I Hate It – the county cricket and crying Aussies edition
3 minute readA semi-regular feature in which we ask a fella going by the name of Prince Prefab about cricket – even though he hates cricket. We are in bold. Prince Prefab is not. King Cricket: We’re speaking now on the eve of the County Championship and I am all the way
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Who will initially be named as a County Championship title contender but actually end up getting relegated?
2 minute readThe first week of the County Championship is a great time for predictions. We’ve gone through a whole bunch of previews to pick out the three teams who have most often been mentioned as favourites this year and we’re now going to try and predict which of those favourites will
Continue readingTwo reasons why squad rotation in county cricket is a very bad thing
< 1 minute readCounty cricket doesn’t get enough media coverage that it can get away with resting players. That’s the two-second version of the point I’m making over at Wisden. Whether they say as much or not, counties rotate their squads. There are two problems with this. 1. It makes teams shitter There
Continue readingReece Topley postpones overuse injury for a year
< 1 minute readReece Topley’s not going to play first-class cricket this year. He’s been injured a lot – stress fractures mostly – so Hampshire asked the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) what they should do. The ECB pretty much said that there’s altogether too much domestic cricket for a pace bowler
Continue readingAlex Hales is not ‘turning his back’ on Test or first-class cricket
< 1 minute readNot least because he isn’t currently a Test cricketer. But that’s not really our point. Imagine you have three important things to do today, but you’re kind of pressed for time. If you’re anything like us, you’ll favour the ingenious solution of doing a really half-arsed job on all three.
Continue readingWhy is Adil Rashid giving up first-class cricket and becoming a white ball specialist?
3 minute readBecause he’s pressed for time. Adil Rashid has signed a white-ball only contract with Yorkshire for the 2018 season. Some will say he’s looking to become a short format specialist because it’ll allow him to buy a bigger car or house or whatever, but that’s missing the point. The point
Continue readingWho is Tom Helm?
2 minute readWe experienced a delightful nostalgic moment earlier this week when we read that Tom Helm had narrowly lost out to Tom Curran for an Ashes call-up. “Who’s Tom Helm?” we thought. We knew the name, we knew he was a bowler, but it’s been a long, long time since we
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