3 minute readBen Stokes came out of one-day retirement and immediately got picked for England’s World Cup squad. Of course he did – he’s Ben Stokes. Except he’ll be playing only as a batter. While he’s obviously extremely good at batting and capable of innings few others are… is he definitely, definitely
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6 minute readAnd so the greatest Test batter of all time has departed the game just four ducks short of Courtney Walsh’s all-time record with 39. To put that in context, the next highest tally by someone with a Test hundred to their name is Marvan Atapattu’s 22 – and that was
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2 minute readThe what now? Come on, you remember: The Alternative Test Cricket World Championship. We did two or three blog posts about it on a different domain back in 2006. It’s the one that’s decided like a boxing title, where you can only become champions by beating the current champions. That’s
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7 minute readPlayers and commentators talk a lot about playing each ball on its merits, but actually it’s not always that good an idea. Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley gave an illustration why in the 2023 Ashes. It’s a mad but completely true fact that England haven’t had a settled opening partnership
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3 minute readIt’s almost time to start looking ahead to the Ashes again, but before we get back to that, let’s first look back on the Ashes. Specifically, let’s look back on ‘looking ahead to the Ashes’ by revisiting our 10 things to watch out for from before the series, so that
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3 minute readThe 2023 Ashes has sogged and then at the last moment unexpectedly fizzled to its conclusion. With five Tests in 46 days, immediately following on from the World Test Championship final, it’s been a lot to take in. What do you actually remember of it? The series itself resulted in
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< 1 minute readIt’s a weird feature of cricket that you can go out in style but then still carry on playing for the whole of the rest of the day and probably a good chunk of the next day as well. Stuart Broad ended his batting career gloriously. Never mind the artifice
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2 minute readIt’s quite possible you didn’t. He only scored nine of them in 82 balls after all. You have options in Test cricket. You can choose how you go about things. We would argue that England’s hare approach to batting at the minute is actually a lot more interesting for being
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4 minute readIt’s late July and that of course means the end of the Test summer. With no more England men’s fixtures scheduled until the tour of India from the end of January 2024, you should probably try and make the most of the Oval Test. The nights are drawing in, as
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4 minute readIt was only one innings, but two Zak Crawleys batted at Old Trafford last week. The first was what we call in these parts “a jousey bastard” who cemented his reputation as the most gifted inside-edger in world cricket. The second was an almighty destroyer of worlds who flickered into
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