Posted by There’s a lot of focus on Test cricket that’s going to happen, but elsewhere in the world Test cricket is actually already underway (or has recently finished).
India v South Africa
Over in Kolkata, a pretty big match: the reigning world Test champions versus the sport’s biggest nation at one of the greatest grounds: Eden Gardens.
South Africa captain Temba Bavuma won the toss, surveyed an India team containing no fewer than four spinners and quite understandably chose to bat. His openers duly put on a half century partnership, at which point Jasprit Bumrah took 5-27.
Is there a clearer measure of the supreme brilliance of Lord Megachief of Gold than taking five for spit on a four-spinner pitch? Such a silly cricketer. Sillier than Camelot.
Bangladesh v Ireland
It’s always newsworthy when Ireland get to play a Test match. Unfortunately, they found both wickets and runs hard to come by in Sylhet. They lost by an innings.
“Bangladesh were just better than us in every aspect of the game,” was the assessment of captain Andrew Balbirnie.
He reckons they need to play as much as possible in these sorts of unfamiliar conditions – which is good news because the second Test starts on Wednesday.
Papal seal
Ollie Pope was probably England’s number three anyway. Despite Marcus Trescothick’s bizarre evasion, this was then all but confirmed by his selection in the ‘England’ team for this weird warm-up match. Jacob Bethell making 2 for the Lions pretty much sealed it.
So why did Pope – a man who already has a track record of pissing away his run-scoring early in a series – then go and needlessly fritter away a hundred runs he could have deployed at some other time? You damn fool, Ollie! You’re no longer due!
Ashes filtration
We were very kindly invited onto the Cricket Unfiltered podcast earlier this week to talk about our book. We talked about plenty of other stuff too, obviously. Not wildly different stuff, admittedly. Pretty much all we talked about was the Ashes, and our book is, after all, about the Ashes. It was different Ashes stuff though. Future Ashes.
If you want to have a listen, you can find the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and doubtless a bunch of other places.
Where is The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments for sale again?
Here’s your daily stock update.
- Bookshop.org – available, says it usually dispatches within three weeks, seems to be quicker
- Amazon – 15 copies in stock with more supposedly on the way
- TGJones/WHSmith – out of stock
- Awesome Books – out of stock
- Blackwell’s – in stock, “usually dispatched within 2-3 weeks”
- Hive – out of stock
