Graeme Swann interviews

< 1 minute read You want Graeme Swann to be man of the match every time he plays, because he’s head and shoulders above everyone else in world cricket when it comes to the post-match interview. Today’s offering after a consolation win that followed six consecutive defeats: “Everyone talks about this big word ‘momentum’.

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How bad is England’s one-day batting?

< 1 minute read Four fifties between them in six one-day internationals. That’s bad. Remember when you were at school and someone had egg sandwiches. ‘Ughh. Who’s got egg?’ someone would ask. Think of the faces everyone made when they realised someone had egg. There were probably even a few children crying, because having

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England’s batting card and score

< 1 minute read It’s rare that a side scores 299 in a one-day international and yet has such an underwhelming batting card. Who got the runs? Somehow, it was no-one. To be fair, Eoin Morgan’s 58 off 41 balls was pretty eye-catching, but it still falls slightly short of significance somehow, particularly after

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Ravi Bopara is keen but not too keen

< 1 minute read He’s confident without being arrogant; humble without being meek; aggressive without being irresponsible; watchful without being bogged down. That’s what he’d say anyway. England’s cricketers know they have to say the right things and it’s painful to hear at times. They have to remain positive otherwise the media call them

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An Ashes win equals big money

< 1 minute read You’re an England player. You’ve won the Ashes. You get in touch with your agent: “Commercial opportunities. What have you got for me?” Your agent’s silent a minute and you can hear him shuffling some papers on his desk. “Hello. Are you there? Commercial opportunities. What have you got?” Your

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Day night Test cricket

< 1 minute read Our knee jerk-reaction to suggestions that day-night Test cricket be played was that it was a shocker of an idea. We’ve always thought of knee-jerk reactions as being worth clinging to in the face of subsequent strong evidence against your point of view, but on this occasion we’re softening our

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Are you sick of 50 over cricket?

< 1 minute read The conventional one-day game is probably the least popular format in England right now. Seven 50 over matches have been tacked onto the end of a summer that’s already seen a Test and one-day series against the West Indies, the Twenty20 World Cup, the Ashes and what would have been

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England’s one-day cricket and life

< 1 minute read We’re warming to the idea that England’s one-day cricket is like life – all crushing disappointments and anticlimax. You want to be a winner. You want to succeed. You try so very hard to become competent at something, but everything you learn seems to be immediately rendered irrelevant by some

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