When we wrote about how Adil Rashid is almost as good a batsman as Stuart Broad the other day, a number of people saw this as some kind of slur. Maybe they misinterpreted our words because they for some inexplicable reason do not believe that Stuart Broad is a quite
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Stuart Broad is the greatest batsman in the history of cricket. Everybody knows that. What people don’t know is that Adil Rashid is almost as good. One of the great tragedies of England having loads of bowlers who can bat is that fans very rarely get to catch a glimpse
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As Ian Bell retires from first-class cricket, let’s talk about a player whose Test record was plenty good enough but whose technique honestly left us kind of cold. Ian Bell was player of the series in a 3-0 Ashes win. Can we just state that first before we get into
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The First Crowd-Free T20 International between England and Australia saw the home team engineer a position where they would have to play very well and Australia very badly to secure their desired result. England did their bit and so too did Australia, in large part thanks to David Warner’s nondescript
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The most powerful ‘no’ in film is the one in Rise of the Planet of the Apes when Caesar reveals that he is far more than a “damn dirty ape”. It happens a surprisingly long way into the film, which allows for quite a lot of emotional build-up. It’s well-timed
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Dom Sibley’s first-class bowling average is 67.75. The remarkable thing about this is that it means he has taken a wicket – four of them, to be precise. On the fifth day of an intolerably moist match against Pakistan, Dom Sibley had his first bowl in Test cricket. He bowled
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If England’s 2020 Test summer is remembered for anything, it will not be for the return of BBC highlights, Ben Stokes doing absolutely everything against the West Indies or the bizarre sights and sounds of matches played without crowds. No, if England’s 2020 Test summer is remembered for anything it
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The notion of being a natural at something is a wonderful and seductive and funny and misleading thing. Let’s say that you wanted to start playing an instrument again. You used to play the flute when you were at school but then subsequently neglected it and you haven’t picked the
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You might be expecting some sort of pithy takedown of Colin Graves’ tenure as ECB chairman here. Don’t get your hopes up. Our headline is brutally literal. We just watched Graves defending The Hundred and other things on Sky Sports and it struck us that his hand gestures were feeble.
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Chris Woakes swings the ball less than Jimmy Anderson and seams it less than Stuart Broad. As an all-rounder, he isn’t as striking or dynamic as Ben Stokes. He’s still good though, isn’t he? For several years, England figured that even if there wasn’t an exact Chris-Woakes-shaped hole in their
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