< 1 minute read Jerome Taylor routed a batting side. You have to like someone who does that, even if they do it against your team. Given a choice between England ‘bowling with discipline’ again or Jerome Taylor taking 5-11 again, we’ll go with Taylor’s display thank you very much. Taylor’s not ludicrously fast,
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Take the positives out of that
< 1 minute read “Possibly we didn’t play Jerome Taylor in the right sort of way.” Andrew Strauss The bat-on-ball to ball-on-stump ratio would tend to indicate a flaw in your collective approach, yes. England love to take the positives and they did that here. Unfortunately, they took all the positives from their second
Continue readingIan Botham quote
< 1 minute read “I don’t think it’s going to go away, the technology. I really don’t.” Now we’re a massive, massive fan of primitive flint tools. We’d welcome a return to their chiselled, sedimentary perfection more willingly than anyone. But we’re still inclined to agree with Sir Ian on this one. The technology
Continue readingJerk chicken during England’s tour of the West Indies
< 1 minute read We just popped into our local Co-op. Two of the staff were looking at a new takeaway menu. One said: “It sounds nice, that chicken and chips.” We’ve got that menu. It waxes lyrical. It says: ‘One portion of chicken and chips.’ Mmm. That does sound nice. If we can
Continue readingHate Ian Bell?
< 1 minute read A lot of people hate Ian Bell – England supporters mostly. Given a choice between his playing crap and getting dropped or his playing well and averaging 55, a lot of people would choose the first option. We’d choose the second. For all his flaws, 26 year-olds who can average
Continue readingEngland beat Pakistan at the Oval
< 1 minute read Nearly three years on and still they’re arguing about whether England ‘won’ via a Pakistan forfeiture or whether it was ‘match abandoned’. At best it’s splitting hairs. Everyone knows what it was: a balls-up. The match should be officially reclassified as such. Sport is of the moment. Except for a
Continue readingIPL window for England players
2 minute read A group of guys who aren’t you have got an opportunity to earn a lot of money. The situation is that any England players who might actually be wanted by an IPL franchise will play Twenty20 in India for three weeks and then their next match after that will be
Continue readingTests at neutral venues
< 1 minute read Zapp Brannigan says: “What makes a good man go neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?” Neutrality sickens us, just as it sickens him. Picturing a neutral crowd at a neutral Test venue sends us into a blind fury at all
Continue readingAndrew Strauss wants cricketers who use their brains for something other than preventing their skulls from caving in
2 minute read We’re not in the habit of paying much heed to public pronouncements from cricketers. You can say what you like. It’s not the same as actually doing something. We could say that we beat Thor at chess yesterday, but it’s transparently a lie. We would never play chess. However, we
Continue readingMonty Panesar’s bowling speed
< 1 minute read People say that Monty Panesar bowls too fast and that he doesn’t adapt. People say that he’s a mindless idiot who hasn’t got the potential to develop his game. He’s not moved on as most England supporters would have liked, but people have been going a bit overboard. There’s nothing
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