2 minute readIf you were starring in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and needed to act in a scene where the submarine grounded on the seabed or was attacked by some sort of leviathan, there was only one way to do it. You and the rest of the cast ran
Continue reading< 1 minute readSometimes you win, sometimes you lose. When you win, all’s well. The captain says that you played well as a unit while adding a cautionary note: “We are not yet the finished article.” When you lose, he talks about processes and learning curves. Lose a few in a row and
Continue reading< 1 minute readDavid Warner said that back in 2012, he saw Shivnarine Chanderpaul put in a six-hour shift against the bowling machine. “I said ‘This is ridiculous, how can you do this?’ and he said: ‘If you’re going to bat for six hours in a game you might as well practise it.’”
Continue reading< 1 minute readHe’s in the squad. The squad’s not that big. He probably will. Australia may well be going down the same route, but it still seems weird to us to select players for a World Cup when you’ve never selected them before. We were so taken aback by Liam Dawson’s inclusion
Continue reading2 minute readThe human brain isn’t wired for statistics. In fact it isn’t wired at all. Perhaps that’s the problem. Maybe in the distant future when we’re all mechanically enhanced cyberfolk we’ll be able to make logical decisions based on data rather than being influenced by our demented emotional responses to stories
Continue reading< 1 minute readAustralia have gone a bit England with their T20 World Cup preparations. Their long-term planning has climaxed with a 15-man squad where a third of the players haven’t even played a T20 international. Impressive stuff. They’re clearly of a mind that having the right components is of more importance than
Continue reading< 1 minute readWe once overheard one man say to another man: “I gave you the money and you ate the money.” True story. The background is that we were in a restaurant in Goa on Christmas Day. It was early evening and the proprietor was already absolutely shit-faced. A customer was buying
Continue reading< 1 minute readThe ICC has realised that the ‘Big Three’ changes pushed through in 2014 were… (a) taking the piss a bit; and (b) liable to lead to the complete implosion of the sport in the long-term They have therefore resolved to do something different instead; something a bit less shit.
Continue reading< 1 minute readIn the first one-day international against South Africa at Bloemfontein, England, batting first, again failed to pass 400. In so doing they extended a barren run which now stretches all the way back to June. On a flat pitch, they would have expected to have done better. South Africa, Australia
Continue reading< 1 minute readApparently things don’t ‘hove into view’. They actually heave into view – it’s just that no-one says that. One thing’s for certain though, things that demand this verb are large and cumbersome. A cat never heaves into a view, for example (although it may well heave while in view, if
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