2 minute readWhat will Notts’ and Surrey’s best bowlers do this week with the County Championship on the line? One thing they won’t do is play cricket. Mid September is something of a seasonal warzone. Meterologists say it’s autumn, while astronomers say you’ve still got a week or two of summer until
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2 minute readThe draw is an unloved thing. No-one sings songs about finishing level because you’ve run out of time. You don’t get impassioned speeches of the oeuvre, ‘maybe it’ll rain this afternoon and we’ll get away with this one’. But draws are still important – some years more than others. Back
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3 minute readYou’re no doubt aware that the counties are currently having a big old argument about how to alter the County Championship for future seasons. (And if you aren’t already aware, you’d surely assume that was the case anyway, because when have they not been arguing about that?) It’s been said
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5 minute readIt’s county cricket revamp discussion season again. Except really it’s always county cricket revamp discussion season. When we reported on county cricket’s latest structural review on the first day of the season, we expressed not so much scepticism that anything meaningful might come of it, but cast iron certainty that
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4 minute readAfter the Lord Mayor’s Show comes a cart to clear up all the horseshit. That is at least a very different thing from what preceded it, rather than merely a shorter version of the same thing that’s consequently far more limited in scope. In that sense The Hundred can at
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2 minute readThey say that in London you’re never more than six feet from a rat that has ballooned in size after feeding on one of the city’s countless sewer fatbergs. We don’t know about that, but we do know that in cricket you’re never more than 12 months from a T20
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3 minute readBoth Mike Atherton’s son, Josh de Caires, and Michael Vaughan’s son, Archie Vaughan, have thus far billed themselves as all-rounders. You’re supposed to write that they’re their own men, making their own unique ways in the game, but we can’t help but notice that de Caires is opening the batting
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2 minute readWhen Lancashire were relegated last season, it elicited the usual silver lining consolatory thought among supporters that at least they might win a few more games in Division 2. Dear reader, Lancashire have not yet won a single game in Division 2. Lancashire are bottom. Of the second division. A
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2 minute readIf there’s one thing you can confidently say about Warwickshire’s Ethan Bamber, it’s that his father played Hitler in a Tom Cruise film. The film in question was Valkyrie, about a failed attempt by German army officers to assassinate Hitler. As is for some reason traditional when Hollywood needs people
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2 minute read“When you go, your footprints will fill with grass. Moss shall cover your tombstone, and as the sun rises, green shall spread over all, in all its shades and hues. This verdigris will overtake your swords and your coins and your battlements and, try as you might, all you hold
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