2 minute read The big news since yesterday is that Afghanistan are through to the next phase of the competition and New Zealand are out. England aren’t NRRly finished though after successfully chasing down Oman’s 47 all out in just 3.1 overs. Salt consumption Oman’s flakey performance meant the entire match only lasted
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4 minute read No prizes for predicting that England and Pakistan would be two of the ‘big’ nations struggling to qualify for the next phase of this T20 World Cup. New Zealand aren’t usually on the receiving end of drubbings though, even if Afghanistan victories in these tournaments don’t exactly qualify as upsets
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2 minute read Everyone has a favourite batter. Everyone has a favourite fast bowler. Everyone also has a favourite fast-medium short ball workhorse bowler… and it’s always Neil Wagner, because no-one else in the history of cricket has ever made that work. Unique cricketers usually stand out for very obviously freakish physical reasons.
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2 minute read 2023 Cricket World Cup, Game 1, England v New Zealand There’s not much sign that New Zealand have many batters in form, while two of the three we’ve seen are clearly peaking too soon. England, in contrast, are pacing their ascent to top form beautifully. Starting here at ‘dogshit’, they
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2 minute read We’re in the era of the boundary juggler. It was therefore quite refreshing to deploy an ‘oh wow’ for a good old diving catch yesterday, as Glenn Phillips briefly turned into a glider to dispatch Moeen Ali. England levelled the one-day series against New Zealand yesterday and in so doing
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2 minute read Cricket is a mad and contrary sport. In a Test where he masterminded a successful fourth-innings run-chase with 121 not out, Kane Williamson’s most exciting contribution was to completely bloody miss the ball and run a bye. For those that don’t know, Williamson faced the scheduled final ball of the
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3 minute read Jimmy Anderson has played 179 Test matches and he was completely pissed off to lose this one by a single run. Jimmy Anderson is a quite majestically irritable cricketer. The penultimate ball of the second Test between New Zealand and England could, and probably technically should, have been called a
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3 minute read We once joked that England’s plan for Jonny Bairstow was to keep him guessing. It always seemed like the aim was to treat him as inconsistently as possible to keep him on his toes. After scoring four hundreds and a fifty in five innings last summer, it seemed safe to
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2 minute read With 15 minutes to go on day two, Stuart Broad walked out to bat at number four as England’s “Nighthawk”. Second ball he skied a hook that fell to earth after bowler and keeper left it for each other. It is hard to envisage a more Broad passage of play.
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< 1 minute read There was a moment during the first Test against New Zealand when England’s number five, Harry Brook, boasted a Test average and strike-rate that were both 94. Either of those would be ridiculous. Both is preposterous. Then he got out. How did Harry Brook get out? We could have told
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