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As a result of Cricinfo’s redesign, we don’t actually know that a Sri Lanka v India Test is taking place and therefore cannot comment on who has scored hundreds and who has been dismissed for three.
We will instead restrict ourself to an observation that England will be picking at least a couple of debutants: Tom Westley and Toby Roland-Jones (genuinely just had to check that it wasn’t Toby-Roland Jones). Dawid Malan may also join them, once England have exerted a degree of force and so gauged “the balance of the side”.
This kind of thing happens every now and again and it has to be said that it tends to be a bit of a wheat-and-chaff exercise. For example, Michael Vaughan made his Test debut in the same match as Chris Adams and Gavin Hamilton.
Westley is “oft talked about” and “highly regarded”. This week he will become even more oft talked about and we’ll have to see how he copes with that. Roland-Jones has been in the queue since this time last year. Dawid Malan is a cricketer.
I was in a similar boat re: Sri Lanka vs India. If it wasn’t for the ‘Top Events presented by bet365’ bar at the top (which makes it easier to bet on the outcome than it does to see which country the match is taking place in), I would remain unaware of the score.
We don’t happen across ‘upcoming fixtures’ much any more. As far as we can tell, you have to go looking for them.
Thanks to that top events bar I now know that TP beat RTW by 10 wickets in the TNPL. If only I knew what any of those acronyms were.
Meanwhile, I was looking at the India/SL match scorecard and now can’t find the “Career averages” page, which was one of my go-to pages 🙁 Their “Statistics” tab is completely useless, unless I guess if I was desperate to know that Pujara’s most productive shot is the “Flick”. I am waiting with baited breath to see if it tells me that Jadeja’s is the “Hoick”
They broke the app as well. Trying to view a scorecard gives you a broken link instead. Had to resort to the India-centric Cricbuzz for now.
Toby Roland-Jones is an anagram of ENJOY BAT ON LORDS. Given that Lord’s was the venue for his first and so far only first class century, this must be most apposite cricketing anagram since someone worked out that Trescothick was an anagram of CRICKET SHOT.
It’s a shame Roland-Jones has missed the Lords test – playing at the Oval means he has to make do with BAREST LONDON JOY.
I’m not having a man named Dawid playing for England.
It’s bad enough that we’ve got a Jos and a Keaton.
Whatever happened to Ian, Andrew, Mike, David?
It’s Broken Britain, I tells ya.
Dawid Malan is an anagram of Alan Dimwad.
It could be worse, you could swap the L and N, and the D and M…
Is that a cigarette butt in the photo?
“This pile of what basically amounts to tinder looks like an excellent place to discard this smouldering fag butt.”
One for our US readers there.
Outstanding
You really don’t like change, do you?
The new presentation of Cricinfo works well for me; the only irritation is the extra-invasiveness of the adverts, which I consider to be the price.
I even like the additional, graphical stats that seem to irk many of you so much. All they lack is the venn diagram.
Of course, my interaction with technology dates back to the days of punch cards and dial-up modems, so I consider everything I encounter daily on the web to be a wonderful little miracle that it is enhancing my life.
Meanwhile the evil geniuses at the ECB are trying harder and harder to knacker Middlesex by picking off our best players to act as drinks waiters and cannon-fodder. It’ll serve them jolly well right if one or more of of our boys plays, comes good and turns the test series around again.
What you need, Ged, is for one of your best players to get picked for England a relatively unimportant T20I, play a shot of such gloriously ridiculous proportions that it can only be self-sabotage, and then conveniently disappear from ‘the debate’ around Test selection.
Dawid Malan: Anal Dimwad
Or DID WAM ANAL. I think Bailout went there in the early hours this morning (as it were), see above.
Three debutants! The ’90s are back!
Hooray! England’s saviours are a guy averaging 38 and another averaging 33.
Cricinfo: FC (Ironic) .
At least the new version has “an enhanced match display logic for Cricket, editions and an improved onboarding experience.”
So that’s all right then.
What??
Maybe it’s a typo for waterboarding?
Gah! Just realised cricinfo live coverage no longer auto-refreshes on my work computer, so the minimised-to-taskbar-live-score option is no longer available to me.
So I refresh it manually, and what happens? Jennings is out.
Coincidence? Well, yes, but still…
Yeah, this irks me too. It’s like I’m triggering the wickets, like some sort of malevolent cricket god. A watched wicket never falls!
I think Cricbuzz is the back-to-basics auto refresher you want
For a reason I don’t fully understand, Cricbuzz doesn’t appear to be an option on the work computer – the page simply fails to load.
I’m making do with the good old (but evidently institutionally sexist) BBC for now.
Westley is 16 off 25, no singles, no twos, no threes, four fours and no sixes. Reminiscent of Phil Hughes, and always a sign of a player in top form.
Four overthrows in the first half-hour of a test match! Great times!
Boycott has already written Westley off after being dismissed a total of none times already in his Test career. Let’s keep looking – is there any way the next cab on this conga line of a rank could replace him during the Test?
Debutant number 2 ladies and gentlemen.
At least Malan scored one more run than Dawson would have. And we have the hope of some part-time leg spin to come.
Dawin Malan is a cricketer.