< 1 minute readDavid Warner says: “I couldn’t be hitting the ball any better but it’s just that the runs aren’t coming for me at the moment.” In this week’s Cricket Badger, we point out that this runs counter to Temba Bavuma’s matter-of-fact observation that, “you can’t be playing well and not scoring
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Everyone’s going mental about Hampshire’s Mason Crane
< 1 minute readEmbed from Getty Images Despite his name, Mason Crane is not some kind of specialist stoneworking construction vehicle. No, HE IS A DESTRUCTION… person. Crane is a 20-year-old leg-spinner who boasts the customary English leg-spinner’s first-class bowling average of 39. Things have changed over the winter though and from now
Continue readingSteve Smith’s shonky technique keeps him hiding in plain sight
2 minute readThe notion of a ‘best batsman in the world’ is stupid. You rate them based on what’s already happened and it counts for nothing the next time they’re pitched into competitive cricket. Cricket is not a prolonged personal odyssey, it’s a series of matches between teams. A high ranking gives
Continue readingMop-up of the day – the batsmen in and out of form
< 1 minute readAustralia drew with India, but let’s not focus on how admirably they’re performing. Who the hell wants to read about that? Let’s instead concentrate on tangentia. David Warner has said that “it will turn around” for him with regards to his recent poor form. We agree. If he keeps being
Continue readingSteve Smith’s brain fades still further, Bangladesh do the reverse
< 1 minute readBangladesh have won nine Tests and we make this their second win. The convention is to remove matches in which Bangladesh feature from all Test statistics. This seems unduly harsh at the best of times, but it seems even more so when it’s them who you’re measuring. Nevertheless, in the
Continue readingThe South hit the North and the great flattener
< 1 minute readOne of the few things that people agree upon about the lyrics of The Fall’s Hit the North is that one of the first lines is “my cat says eeeeee-ack”. So what can we agree upon about the South’s hitting of the North’s bowlers today? That it was more successful
Continue readingRemember what Test cricket in India used to be like?
< 1 minute readEmbed from Getty Images Big innings, bigger innings, small innings, smaller innings. That used to the be the sequence for a Test match taking place in India. Declarations happened a lot. Australia just made 451 and it seems a good score, but it wasn’t so long ago you’d be thinking
Continue readingVideo: Steve Smith tries to counter Wriddiham Saha’s ball-delving
< 1 minute readDay one of the third Test between India and Australia. Glenn Maxwell played cricket and made runs, Steve Smith uglied yet another hundred and Wriddiham Saha went snuffling around in the Australian captain’s crotch in an attempt to pluck out a ball. Here’s a video. Wriddhiman Saha & Steve Smith
Continue readingThem North v South matches start this week
2 minute readOr, you know, “those” North v South matches if you’ve got some weird dialect or other. Rivalries are rarely more intense than between two groups of people who are all but identical when viewed with any sense of perspective. The rest of the cricket world will look on in amused
Continue readingJason Roy wants England to be worse at one-day cricket
2 minute readIt’s happened again. Jason Roy wants to do things that will make England worse at cricket. Ahead of the World T20, Roy appeared to lose sight of his role at the top of the order, which we likened to tinder. He said he wanted to give himself time, apparently unaware
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