< 1 minute readThe great tragedy of England’s six-man bowling attack is that Gary Ballance never gets to bowl. We reckon that Joe Root and Keaton Jennings are likely to get on before him as well, so realistically he’s ninth choice. England will need to have an extraordinarily bad day before we see
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Moeen Ali and Stuart Broad follow by example
< 1 minute readWith their feisty batting in the morning and a pair of wickets each, Moeen Ali and Stuart Broad truly delivered non-captains’ performances. This is what good team members do. They set an example for the captain to follow. It’s like they always say: he who leads the leader slightly reduces
Continue readingJoe Root sinks a few and then wanders off on his own
< 1 minute readIf Joe Root’s going to try and lead by example, he might want to check whether anyone’s actually following him. If no-one does, then we’re afraid it’s just plain old ‘batting well’ – which is what he always used to do anyway. What kind of captaincy is that? If you’re
Continue readingLiam Livingstone’s golden duck was one of the finest
2 minute readLiam Livingstone’s England debut was pretty spectacular. He didn’t just fail to display his talent to a wider audience, he actively concealed it. He dropped a catch; mishit everything, including the one boundary that he hit; bust his bat; and then got run out. He also found time to enrage
Continue readingAB de Villiers plays decisive innings to win first T20 for England
2 minute readA real man of the match performance from AB de Villiers won England the first T20 international against South Africa. The greatest sportsman who ever lived ate up 58 balls in making an unbeaten 65. If the innings hinted at a two-paced pitch, England’s batsmen only noticed one of them
Continue readingEngland play South Africa in a pretty meaningless T20 international and Bob isn’t playing
< 1 minute readWe said you were going to start noticing everyone going mental about Mason Crane. Today marks an obvious step-up in mentalgoing as it seems highly likely the leg-spinner will make his international debut. Indirectly referring to him, AB de Villiers grappled with the meaning of the word ‘unknown’. “A few
Continue readingEngland need some E45 cream
< 1 minute readAfter snatching the second one-day international, England decided to test the notion that they can now win from any position by giddily launching themselves towards 20-6 in the third. Now 20-6 is definitely a score you can win from, but ideally you’d be fielding when it occurred. South Africa got
Continue readingSouth Africa have already choked
< 1 minute readWe were quite keen to be first off the mark in using the word “choked” to mean “lost a cricket match” in reference to South Africa this summer. Hopefully we have achieved our aim. When you see the term deployed by others in the weeks to come, be sure to
Continue readingTom Latham can see the future (+ video)
< 1 minute readThat is the only half-decent explanation for this catch. How good!? – Tom Latham’s in-close-running-one-hander to remove Faf du Plessis #NZvSA ^WN pic.twitter.com/8b2PtYvT6K — BLACKCAPS (@BLACKCAPS) March 26, 2017 Far and away our favourite part of this footage is seeing Bruce Oxenford visibly embarking upon a gasp towards the end.
Continue readingAB de Villiers slowly coming to terms with Test retirement
< 1 minute readVery slowly. He’s not yet at a point where he’ll accept that his final Test was in January last year. Earlier this week, de Villiers made himself unavailable for selection for the upcoming Test series in New Zealand in March. Today he ruled himself out of the Test series against
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