3 minute read After rather improbably sweeping and spinning a win in Hyderabad, England head to Visakhapatnam hoping to do something similar in the second Test. But can we expect similar conditions? All of the world’s great grounds have big, bold, powerful names that hit you hard and fast: Lord’s, Newlands, Eden Gardens,
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3 minute read We don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway. If there was a key moment for Tom Hartley on his debut, it was when Ben Stokes didn’t whip him out of the attack to ‘protect’ him after an over or two in
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2 minute read Doing your cricket things slightly earlier in the match is all the rage this month. Steve Smith’s become an opening batter. Jack Leach (or Rehan Ahmed or Tom Hartley or Joe Root) has become an opening bowler. England have picked just one quick bowler, Mark Wood, for the first Test
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3 minute read Some pretty big news has broken since England (finally) touched down in India for their five-Test series. It’s not Virat Kohli missing the first two games for personal reasons. It’s not Harry Brook missing (probably, maybe) the whole series, also for personal reasons. It’s to do with Ben Stokes. We
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4 minute read A Test tour of India feels like a bit of a free hit these days. England are supposed to lose… heavily. Captain and coach talk a good game and their ambitions and belief are genuine, but if the tourists emerge with anything less than a 5-0 defeat, those oh-so-familiar clichéd
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5 minute read Our 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. We don’t want to start all downbeat, but sometimes an exercise brings a particular situation into sharper focus. We all know
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< 1 minute read If you don’t know our approach to covering the Boxing Day Tests, it involves listing what matches are taking place, wishing everyone a happy Festivus and then buggering off. In previous years, you, the readership, have boldly stepped into the breach and highlighted all the interesting cricket in the comments
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3 minute read To scroll through the list of venues for women’s Tests between England and India is to be struck by two things. (1) They don’t play in India very often. (2) The few India Tests that do take place are held in rather bigger cities than the ones used for the
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3 minute read Where were you when Ruturaj Gaikwad was run out by Nathan Ellis? You almost certainly have no idea because you almost certainly weren’t paying attention and quite possibly don’t even realise that it happened in an India v Australia match. International cricket teams aren’t guitars: in an ideal world you’d
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4 minute read If you’d asked anyone, at any point in the last year, how this ever-so-predictable World Cup would climax, they’d have all given exactly the same answer. It was always going to end with Welcome to the Jungle blaring out over the PA as Marnus Labuschagne punched the air with 58
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