< 1 minute readDear Short Ball, I would be most grateful if you would come round later on. I will pull out all the stops for you. You can sit in my armchair. I will bring you drinks. I even have some of your favourite cake. Don’t worry about replying. All of this
Continue reading2 minute readA lot of people quibble with the ICC’s Test rankings, but we think they’re pretty good. The rankings are more weighty than simply saying which is the best team at any given moment. They reward sustained excellence. You can say that they should recognise which is the best team right
Continue reading< 1 minute readIt is like being in a broken submarine at the bottom of the sea. England are the water. England don’t hammer to get in. They just apply constant force. Every now and again, one of the Indian crew wonders whether they’ve somehow floated to the surface and opens the door
Continue reading1 minute readEven without Ian Bell returning to the crease after being run out, yesterday was an odd day’s cricket. In what had seemed a low-scoring match, England somehow scored over 400 in a day. There were four reasons for this. Ian Bell When the bowling was good, he was better. England’s
Continue reading< 1 minute readCricket action stops and starts and we didn’t feel very comfortable with someone being run-out when pretty much everyone on the field had stopped playing. We don’t care too much about the technical rights and wrongs and everyone on the field seemed to share those feelings once they’d had a
Continue reading< 1 minute readThis is a good pitch. It has led to good cricket. A one-day pitch can be flat, because the game progresses with each over, but Test matches progress with the fall of wickets. When a match is progressing, other events other than wickets also matter more. It is how Test
Continue reading< 1 minute readLast year, we were going to watch a cricket match with a friend who hadn’t watched the sport in many years. “I only like it when we bat,” he said. We’re off work today and we’re a bit disappointed that England are batting. We prefer cricket when England are bowling.
Continue reading< 1 minute readD Charlton writes: It was my brother (G Charlton)’s stag do. We went to Bristol and watched the Twenty20. As is customary, he dressed as a morph. And he made some friends. By the end of England’s innings, the bloke at the back had said: “You’re allowed peanuts in, Orange,
Continue reading< 1 minute readIndia don’t like some elements of the decision review system (DRS) and their refusal to use it might at some point come back to haunt them. Okay, we get it. Does the schadenfreude really have to be so obviously primed for deployment? We also have issues with the term ‘DRS’.
Continue reading< 1 minute readSouth Australia off-spinner, Nathan Lyon, has been called up to the Australia Test squad after just four first-class matches. Can we be the first to brand him ‘the next Shane Warne’? You have to get that in early with your Aussie spinners these days, what with the rapid turnover and
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