< 1 minute read Well, maybe a bit, but Jacques Kallis’s reputation seems to be etched in stone now and nothing he ever does will change it. “He just accumulates,” said Nasser Hussain shortly after Kallis passed 100. ‘Didn’t he drop to one knee and thock the ball over the boundary at one point?’
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Ashwell Prince is “organised”
< 1 minute read We’ve heard it a few times this morning: Ashwell Prince is “organised”. This means that he is patient and a bit boring. It’s a great cricket euphemism. You could just as easily describe him as “compact” which means much the same. But for the referrals system, Prince would also have
Continue readingThe four best bowlers over the next five years
2 minute read Picking the bowlers was much harder than picking the batsmen and all-rounders. We’re not going to pretend that we’re 100% happy with what we’ve come up with because that would be dishonest and we save the dishonesty for getting out of social events. Dale Steyn, South Africa, age 26 We’ve
Continue readingMakhaya Ntini’s 100th Test cap
< 1 minute read Makhaya Ntini should make his 100th Test appearance this week. What strikes us about this is that an African nation’s first black cricketer is still playing.
Continue readingICC Test rankings system
< 1 minute read India have risen to be number one in the rankings and many people will say that the rankings are questionable. Are India the best Test cricket team? A lot of people say the rankings are meaningless. When they make this criticism, they always do it according to a team’s position.
Continue readingMark Boucher at six? This isn’t South Africa
< 1 minute read When England took the fourth wicket of what seemed like a mesmerisingly unstrenuous dismantling of the South African batting line-up, we wondered where the real South Africa were. Mark Boucher at six? Where was the breathtaking conservatism for which South African cricket is so renowned? Think back to the glory
Continue readingThe five best batsmen over the next five years
< 1 minute read The big names are generally old bastards. Who’s next? Ross Taylor, New Zealand, age 25 Ross Taylor tends to look like he’s the man who’s going to win the match for New Zealand shortly before doing something slightly spacky. Pretty soon those fifties will become hundreds and those hundreds will
Continue readingCow corner cricket – Twenty20 matches that push the boundaries
< 1 minute read England just couldn’t quite get the 85 runs they needed off the final ball. However, while we give Loots Bosman and Graeme Smith enormous credit for the faultlessness of their hitting, South Africa’s monumental Twenty20 total of 241 was perhaps one step too close to slogging. We defend Twenty20 cricket
Continue readingLoots Bosman and Graeme Smith should play on ‘hard’ now
< 1 minute read Loots Bosman and Graeme Smith today batted in international cricket as if they were playing an overfamiliar cricket computer game on easy setting. Simply aim at cow corner and press the six-hit button. It was astonishingly clean hitting. Almost robotic. Alastair Cook erred hugely in not positioning a fielder on
Continue readingDid South Africa choke in a semi final again?
< 1 minute read No, they got beaten by Pakistan, who were ace. It’s good to have the real Pakistan back. At the start of the tournament, we looked at their team and thought: ‘Where’s the fun? Where’s the Pakistani all-or-nothing genius and chaos?’ Turns out it was in there all along.
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