2 minute readWhen a player is dropped during a home series, there’s only one way back into the side. They perform well in first-class cricket, they tell themselves they’ve proved the doubters wrong and they return mentally buoyed. When you’re dropped on tour, things can pan out differently. Gary Ballance has just
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Our England-India composite XI
2 minute readAll Out Cricket are doing a thing where you can pick your England-India Composite XI from the last 25 years. Here’s ours: It’s easy to be distracted by the mouth-watering batting line-up, but there’s more to this team than that. We’ve also picked three spinners, which means either Jonathan Trott
Continue readingR Ashwin is India’s best player and we won’t hear otherwise
2 minute readThanks to India’s flat, lifeless pitches, R Ashwin averages 33.55 with the bat. Because of India’s rank turners, he averages 24.29 with the ball. Or could it be that R Ashwin is India’s best cricketer? We’ve covered this kind of thing before, but you reach our age and you no
Continue readingSome cricket that was scheduled to happen really is going to happen
< 1 minute readIndia are to play New Zealand in the third Test in Indore despite someone somewhere reporting that they wouldn’t. The Indian Express spoke to “a senior board official” who said the BCCI’s bank accounts had been frozen at the recommendation of a court-appointed panel set up to look into its
Continue readingIs Virat Kohli really India’s best batsman?
2 minute readWere he to find himself playing in a format-spanning Super Series, it would seem highly likely that Virat Kohli could find himself named man-of-it. The guy averages over 50 in the two shorter formats with a perfectly healthy strike-rate in both. His Test record’s very good too: 12 Test hundreds
Continue readingWhy Indian pitches offer an excellent exchange rate
< 1 minute readRemember when India’s batsmen used to make double hundreds all the time? Captains routinely doubled up as doctors in the first innings, declaring the innings closed and the pitches dead (even if a certain zombie joie de vivre often manifested itself in the form of turn on day five.) It’s
Continue readingWhere is the ICC’s Test mace?
2 minute readNot much more than a week ago, Australia captain Steve Smith was presented with the ICC Test Championship mace in a closed ceremony. The media and public would of course have been clamouring to attend such a spectacular and meaningful event. The nature of the presentation gave rise to an
Continue readingMop-up of the day – in, out and not out
< 1 minute readAn inadvertently topical but quite possibly inaccurate-by-the-morning headline for UK readers. In Anil Kumble’s… well, he’s not exactly back. He’s back in the public eye, we suppose. He’s India’s new coach. Kumble is a hard, smart and determined man. Coaching India demands more than those qualities, but it’s a fair
Continue readingVirat Kohli is not a bowler, Lendl Simmons is not out, Andre Russell is not suspended
< 1 minute readIndia became so utterly convinced of Virat Kohli’s Midas touch that they gave him an over with the ball. He took a wicket with his first ball. That was the point where they should probably have drawn a line under things. Instead, Kohli came back to bowl the final over
Continue readingWhen it comes to Virat Kohli, object to the hero worship, not the hero
2 minute readPerspective is rarely so absent as in the immediate aftermath of a successful Indian run chase. Even so, the plaudits for Virat Kohli’s unbeaten 82 off 51 against Australia were… let’s go with ‘fulsome’. Fox Sports called him an ‘absolute freak’ because a freak’s a good thing these days. Sourav
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