2 minute readSand drawing is best left to the ni-Vanuatu. You want to make a line that people will pay attention to, etch it in stone or something. This time last year, England were knocked out of the T20 World Cup in the group stages. Their final match, against the West Indies,
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4 minute readThere is no Ashes tour moment quite so clean as the naming of the squad when the wheels are still on and everyone’s fully fit – everyone that is except for Ben Stokes (shoulder), Will Jacks (broken finger) and Mark Wood (most joints). Jacks is for us the most noteworthy
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2 minute readLook, every publication’s got its own way of covering Pat Cummins’ back injury and its possible impact on his participation in the Ashes. This is ours. (For what it’s worth, we have long suspected that for all the column inches devoted to them both, Cummins and Ben Stokes won’t be
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3 minute readJacob Bethell finally scored his first professional hundred and did so in fine style. He’s still not doing his job in England’s one-day team though, because he’s being picked as half an all-rounder. Even at this early juncture, it feels like there isn’t a right lot to say about Bethell’s
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3 minute readWe don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway. We’ve never done one of these for limited overs cricket before, but Sonny Baker’s debut warrants comment as one of the most bathetic (yes, bathetic – not pathetic) entrances you’ll see. Baker had
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8 minute readEveryone loves a Combined XI. Yeah, sure, it’s usually a Best XI, but in these parts we deal in Worst XIs because they’re funnier. This particular one is specifically for an Ashes series played in Australia. How many of England’s upcoming tourists will feature in it? And will any Australians
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4 minute readAfter the Lord Mayor’s Show comes a cart to clear up all the horseshit. That is at least a very different thing from what preceded it, rather than merely a shorter version of the same thing that’s consequently far more limited in scope. In that sense The Hundred can at
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4 minute readIn April 2024, Rob Key, Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum told James Anderson they were looking to regenerate the England Test bowling attack ahead of the next Ashes and could he maybe provide them with another regeneration slot to help them in their efforts. Since then, they’ve given themselves plenty
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7 minute readNo other sport does all-the-fun-of-the-fair climaxes like cricket. In large part that’s due to the complexity of the game and the way specific goals shift from ball to ball (or even within the span of a single delivery). It’s also the fact that these most crucial moments invariably involve the
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4 minute readWe lost a few things to the London weather yesterday: most obviously 20-odd overs, which is no big deal because they can make up the time on days two, three, four and five; far more significantly, Chris Woakes fell victim to the wet, soft, slippy outfield. Woakes had already expressed
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