2 minute readIt’s a reference to a headline pun that’s overused on this website but which isn’t itself a pun. Jokes don’t come much weaker than that. Except for all our other ones. Is Gary Ballance back? Sport is brutally cold and England won’t go into the first Test of the summer
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Let’s keep tabs on Jake Ball
< 1 minute readThere was a phenomenon in Premier Manager 2 where all of your team’s young players would improve by about 20 per cent over the summer break. If you stacked your side with teenagers and managed to avoid the sack, you were all but guaranteed promotion the following season. Has something
Continue readingCricinfo still lumps first and second division matches in together in their live scores box
< 1 minute readDrives us mental. Why do people most often visit Cricinfo? To check the scores. Yet if we look at the current live matches, there is no way of telling which match is in which division, unless you happen to have memorised the teams in each league. At the time of
Continue readingMonty Panesar’s back!
< 1 minute readAs in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got anklosing spondylitis or anything. Like many people, we have a soft spot for Monty Panesar. Firstly, he lent his name to our assistant. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, he was for a time exceptionally good at bowling spin for England. Now he’s back. Back
Continue readingMost of the County Championship starts fairly soon!
< 1 minute readThe wind is tearing the blossom from the trees and depositing it on the dirty wet earth. Men and women in thick winter coats turn their pallid faces to the skies, scrutinising the clouds for tip offs of impending rain showers. Firewood is gathered. Thermostats are turned up. It is
Continue readingA committee of cooks designing a horse for broth
2 minute readThey’ve had a meeting about renovating the entire structure of county cricket. They’ve resolved to repaint one of the bedrooms and maybe replace some of the sealant around the bath. In 1890, it was suggested that county cricket be divided into first, second and third classes with eight teams in
Continue readingFaf du Plessis at Lancashire – a window into South Africa’s present?
3 minute readIt’s almost two years since Graeme Smith played his last Test. More than that since Jacques Kallis retired. Their departures left Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers as South Africa’s senior batsman and all this time later, Amla and de Villiers remain the senior batsmen. Things haven’t moved on. Two
Continue readingCor! Strength! (and core weakness)
< 1 minute readIf bowlers didn’t require torsos, Sussex might have been all right. Side strains, pectoral injuries and dodgy spines meant that Chris Jordan played six matches, Ajmal Shahzad played five and Tymal Mills just two. It’s hard to win much without your pace attack and relegation has ensued. If they can
Continue readingA straightforward easy-to-follow climax to the County Championship
< 1 minute readNo, really. No totting up bonus points in matches you had assumed were irrelevant. No poring over the rules to find out when exactly those bonus points are earned. No keeping track of all of this across three different matches. For once, it’s simple. Unless we’ve missed something (highly likely)
Continue readingIn the cold September rain
< 1 minute readApparently it’s been slatting it down all day in the South-East. Bad news for Surrey, who are pushing to become second division ‘champions’ in one of the few matters left unresolved this domestic season. We use inverted commas around ‘champions’ in much the same way as if we were saying
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