We nearly laid into England after their limp defeat in the first one-day international, but thought: ‘No. Wait. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt for the minute.’ What a waste of an update. England have only gone and played just as pathetically in the second one-dayer. Feeble total
Continue readingCategory: New Zealand
Professional cricketers fail to act their age
A top score of 31 and a third of the team getting run out? A fielding side that dives around after everything like it’s tanked-up on E numbers? It’s under-11s cricket, isn’t it? There was a disappointingly small number of wides and the match wasn’t decided by the one kid
Continue readingTwenty20 takes 22 players
We really like Twenty20, but it can be difficult to report on. It’s more difficult to identify that one, stand-out performance from a player. Twenty20’s more of a team game than you might think. With only 20 overs, it makes sense that one big innings from a batsman decides the
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Dimitri Mascarenhas is handy down the order
England don’t often find batsman who are pretty good. They have good and great batsmen at the top of the order and they have rubbish and not awful batsmen down the order, but there always seems to be a number eight-shaped hole in the batting card. In one-day cricket at
Continue readingEngland v New Zealand – masterful cricket scheduling
Great news for fans of England v New Zealand matches – today’s Twenty20 match was the first of 19 consecutive international fixtures between the two sides. Surely what everyone’s hoping is that one team gets on top early on and shows itself to be vastly superior to the other team.
Continue readingTwenty20 wicketkeeping
Do you want the better batsman or the better wicketkeeper behind the stumps for your team? That argument’s been represented by any number of individual duels over the years. Recently though, we think you’ll all agree that the better batsman’s been winning out, in general. Blame Adam Gilchrist. He’s a
Continue readingRicky Ponting goes through some rather spectacular motions
No, he hasn’t risked eating cream cheese in Karnataka and isn’t enduring THOSE sorts of spectacular motions (just say no, kids). He’s just going through the cricketing motions, only ‘going through the motions’ for Ricky Ponting involves scoring unbeaten hundreds. He operates at a higher level, this batsman. Australia won
Continue readingEveryday cricket every day
Here’s a comparison. The Rugby World Cup finished last Saturday. England played in the final. Their next international fixture will be on the second of February. England’s final match in the Cricket World Cup was on the 21st of April, against the West Indies. Their next international fixture, a Test
Continue readingJustin Kemp: attacking batsman
No headlining effort from us today. World Cup player to watch, Justin Kemp, hadn’t done a great deal since South Africa’s first match, but yesterday he rediscovered runs. Or boundaries, at any rate. 89 off 56 balls is always handy, but when you’re chasing 154 it pretty much does the
Continue readingStill marching…
How refreshing that an England campaign in an international tournament hasn’t ended in meek capitulation for once. A quick note of commiseration for The Colossus who didn’t deserve to be on the losing side after ballsily whopping three sixes off three balls when New Zealand were about 40-4. Craig McMillan
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