< 1 minute readSpeaking about England’s Test bowling attack this week, Steve Harmison managed the rare feat of deploying the word ‘unit’ in a halfway meaningful way. He told Sky Sports that England have to, “make sure that at any one given time they’ve got skill factor with the new ball, an X-factor
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Ben Stokes has been charged with a crime which apparently means he should become available for England again
< 1 minute readBen Stokes was suspended from international cricket while the Crown Prosecution Service decided whether or not to press charges relating to the Bristol scuffle. Now that they have decided to charge him, he’s once again become eligible for selection. We have no real opinion on whether or not Stokes should
Continue readingWe’re not going to write about Jason Roy
< 1 minute readJust read last week’s Wisden piece again with this innings in mind. Jason Roy played five first-class matches last season.
Continue readingEngland’s worst-ever run of Test debutants?
< 1 minute read“Not so much a lack of good players, as a lack of opportunity for many good players to gain the experience needed to become very good.” Slippery and awkward as it is, we can see this becoming a new catchphrase of ours. It’s about recent efforts to select viable England
Continue readingA guy who may or may not truly be called Bert fills us in on the latest instalment of his long-running Ashes bet with some Aussie
2 minute readBert writes: OK, hold onto your hats. I can now reveal the result of the latest Ashes Bet between me and my Aussie mate. The result is… He Won! Yeh alright, since the bet is on the outcome of the series this has been known since December, but why should
Continue readingShoulda, coulda, woulda – five things England got wrong ahead of the 2017-18 Ashes
4 minute readWe were originally going to present this article as being the views of Captain Hindsight, but when we started to write it we realised that half of England’s problems were actually fairly easy to see in advance. So while some of what follows comes with the benefit of knowing how
Continue readingWhy does Mason Crane have so many aborted deliveries?
2 minute readWhite bread, brown bread, sourdough, rye or ciabatta? Faced with an unexpected question after reaching the head of a long, long queue, Mason Crane would not be rushed into a rash decision, you feel. Everyone can wait. As dozens of pairs of frustrated eyes tried to bore holes in the
Continue readingMason Crane: first look in Test cricket
< 1 minute readWe don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway. Bowling on the second day with the pitch most likely at its flattest, Mason Crane spun the ball hard enough that it drifted, landed most of his deliveries in pretty much the
Continue readingJoe Root leaves 16 runs out there
< 1 minute readTime is meaningless. Although the sooner a cricketer can appreciate that, the better – so maybe time isn’t meaningless. The fifth Test moved forward almost as much in the last eight deliveries of the day as it had in the previous 483. England will have finished with a sense that
Continue readingJames Anderson: Lord Megachief of Gold 2017
4 minute readOur annual Lord Megachief of Gold award is the highest honour in cricket. The title is recognition of performance over the previous calendar year. Here are all the winners. From a personal perspective, one of the great tragedies of modern Test cricket is that we don’t draw the curtains, switch
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