2 minute readOnly one team successfully beat both the weather and the opposition this week and Sam Cook’s 10-73 was Essex’s most significant contribution. Those figures were also a pretty handy rebuttal to anyone who suggested Cook was a bowler guaranteed to suffer at the listless hands of the slumberous Kookaburra ball.
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2 minute readSam Northeast finished last season with 166 not out. He started this one with 335 not out. It wasn’t his highest score for Glamorgan. In 2022, he made 410 not out. These are hugely impressive feats; the kinds of feats that get you talked about as a possible England batter.
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5 minute readSay what you like about the County Championship, it doesn’t stay still for long. Ever-changing, never static – is it carefully calibrated to appeal to modern, smartphone-eroded attention-spans? Or is it more the kind of spoilt, overworked artwork you end up with when you just can’t stop fiddling with something?
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5 minute readJames Anderson and Stuart Broad made their debuts in their early 20s and then just carried on playing until they were middle-aged. This means the players we might ordinarily think of as constituting ‘the next generation’ are mostly now on the cusp of retirement themselves. England have however given Test
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2 minute readThe 2023 County Championship was won in the way all great sporting competitions are won: by another team failing to secure quite enough bonus points halfway through a game taking place elsewhere. Surrey are champions again. Essex are not. Essex had needed at least 400 in their first innings against
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2 minute readSurrey are 20 points clear of Essex with a game to go. The crucial piece of information that you probably don’t quite have at your fingertips is that a maximum of 24 points can be scored in a game. We suppose there’s always an outside chance Surrey could shed a
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2 minute readYou could definitely have AI report on Essex victories. Or maybe you couldn’t. Maybe the reports would get too samey. How would this latest one go for the win over Middlesex? ChatGPT reckons: “Essex’s opening pair, like a well-rehearsed comedy duo, set the tone for the day. Nick Browne, steady
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2 minute read“I’ve always had the ambition to play in England as an Englishman,” said Dan Worrall last year, shortly before becoming a ‘local player’ for Surrey thanks to the British passport he was entitled to through his father. It’s gone okay. He may wish he’d done it sooner. County cricket has
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3 minute readLike many people, we haven’t paid much attention to the County Championship since the first batch of matches finished in May. This was not unexpected. It was, in fact, the plan – as drawn out in our 2023 “essentials” calendar. Back then, table-toppers Surrey had only played six games and
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3 minute readSouthern Brave’s Danni Wyatt played the most significant innings in the Hundred final. It ended the way all good limited overs innings should end – with a slightly chaotic run-out. Kate Cross isn’t exactly from Manchester. She played her formative cricket in Heywood, just a little way north of what
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