3 minute readEngland don’t change captains too often. The previous one, Charlotte Edwards, made her international debut in 1996 and served as captain from 2005 until 2016 when current captain, Heather Knight, took over. Knight has previously said she’s grown more relaxed as a leader over time because she believes that’s what
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5 minute readWe may or may not have caught up with Mark Wood to talk about his interest in wood. It’s a little known fact that England fast bowler Mark Wood is in fact called Mark Rudd. Team-mates began calling him Wood near the start of his career in mocking acknowledgement of
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2 minute readAt the end of the day, England just wanted it more. Australia showed serious appetite for defeat when they shipped their last eight wickets for 49 runs, but England responded well and crucially held their nerve at the death. Having already successfully lost the first Ashes match (an ODI) by
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3 minute readIt’s amazing to think that this week brought England’s first Test win since 2014 and even more amazing to think they haven’t beaten South Africa since 2003. The amazement then takes on a slightly different hue when you learn that they’ve also preserved their unbeaten record against the same opposition.
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3 minute readWe appear to be back to what we call the Gaylian definition of ‘momentum’ where there’s a hard reset every Test match and recent history is more or less bunk. (Unless you’re Zak Crawley, of course, in which case momentum is very real and you’re almost certainly going to get
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2 minute readThis is the way careers are supposed to end: messily and unsatisfactorily. No wicket with your final ball and six with your final shot. No nonsense exhibition match seemingly played solely for your benefit. Tim Southee has a chance here to lessen the grief for his team-mates and countryfolk by
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3 minute readBack in the mists of time, whenever the digital rights for Test matches were last agreed, someone decided that the free YouTube highlights for a day’s play should be just 10 minutes long. That was when a day’s play was a fifth of a Test match though. Surely now they
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6 minute readBrooks aren’t ordinarily associated with peaks – they tend to run beneath them – but Harry Brook might already be at one. We’ll tell you what stops a brook in its tracks though: a dam – or perhaps in this case, the giving of damns. You may or may not
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2 minute readJames Anderson had a great many attributes as a Test cricketer – none bigger than his ability to serve as a majestic island of chuntering irritation and sadness when England lost a Test match by a single run. England are in Wellington again. Bloody Wellington. To recap what happened last
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2 minute readWe don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway. Ben Stokes lauded Jacob Bethell’s ‘swagger’ after his Test debut. It’s a characteristic that can mark you out as something of a tool in everyday life – but Test cricket is not everyday
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