3 minute readEngland’s batting is bad. England are bad at batting. Bad batting is a thing that England’s batsmen generally do. Before we get into the ins and outs of the badness, let’s contextualise it with the players’ career Test averages because that way we can really get a sense of the
Continue reading< 1 minute readIf we were to ask, ‘who has been your favourite England Test opener since Andrew Strauss retired?’ the answer is obvious. If you say anyone other than Alastair Cook, you are either (a) a contrarian hipster (b) not an England supporter or (c) mental. That’s an easy one. A far
Continue reading< 1 minute readWe honestly haven’t got much left to say about England’s batting, so let’s instead turn our attention to Hasan Ali’s hand and whatever the hell is up with it. Here’s Hasan Ali’s hand midway through delivering the (apparently) fiendishly tempting wide one that did for Joe Root. Strapping is a
Continue reading< 1 minute readAB de Villiers spent rather a long time desperately trying to engineer a cake monopoly. He wanted to retain and eat The Cake of International Cricket; he wanted to retain and eat The Lucrative Cake of T20 Franchise Cricket; and he also wanted to retain and eat The Cake of
Continue reading3 minute readWe were a tremendously big fan of Mohammad Amir even back when he was called Mohammad Aamer. Things have not always been smooth since then. There have been blips. They say that prison changes a man. We ourself have never been incarcerated. One time we accidentally ran a red light
Continue reading2 minute readAsk a stupid question, get a stupid answer. After that, build a whole stupid thing around the stupid answer and then pin all of your hopes for the survival of your sport on how well the stupid thing fares. The ECB are going to launch this 100-ball competition and they
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2 minute readLet’s take a look at how Test teams are picked and whether runs in other formats are relevant. We’ll begin with a quick bit of background. A quick bit of background Doing well at one-day cricket for England used to be a common way of getting into the Test team.
Continue reading3 minute readChuck writes: With my Aged Parent heading towards 83 not out this summer (a superb innings), I decided it was time to introduce him to the pleasures of Test cricket by bringing him to his, and Ireland’s, and indeed my first men’s Test match, against Pakistan in Malahide. Well, day
Continue reading2 minute readA combination of (a) the current state of the England cricket team and (b) the nature of early season cricket means that we’ve almost exclusively been talking about batsmen so far this summer. This isn’t actually all that great for those of us who consider batsmen necessary impediments to the
Continue reading3 minute readThis Ireland v Pakistan Test is a big deal and Ireland are treating it as a big deal. If feels the way international matches are supposed to feel. Ed Joyce said that Test cricket “wasn’t even a pipedream” for Ireland’s men’s team until relatively recently, which really puts things in
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