2 minute readAs in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. So what does this mean? It’s almost two years since he last played for England. Where does he fit in these days? Yesterday, Jofra Archer made his return for Mumbai Indians Cape Town – almost literally a franchise within a
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3 minute readSay what you like about tax-dodging symbol of the horrors of modern global commerce, Amazon, it knows how to promote a documentary series about the Australia Test cricket team. Series one of Amazon Prime’s The Test was notable for footage of Justin Langer kicking a bin over, among other things.
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6 minute readOur annual Lord Megachief of Gold award is the highest honour in cricket. The title is recognition of performance over the previous calendar year. Here are all the winners. Up until now we’ve always recognised players for their batting or their bowling or both. This year, something else has swayed
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2 minute readGed Ladd instructed ChatGPT to write up, three months in advance, the first day of 2023 cricket at Lord’s. The instructions for “The First Day Of The Cricket Season” read, “comedy, 300 words, on no account mention the cricket itself”. Ged supplied ChatGPT with three relevant examples of Ged’s match
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2 minute readWe previewed the Boxing Day Tests. We may as well take a look at what happened in them. Australia v South Africa Signs of an upturn for South Africa, who finally passed 200 for the first time in many attempts. Their second innings 204 all out was enough to secure
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2 minute readA few years ago we hit on a characteristically half-arsed approach to covering the Boxing Day Tests. We flag what matches are taking place in advance, wish everyone a happy Festivus and then cross our fingers and hope that something passing for informative reportage materialises in the comments section. It
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4 minute readLast week Rehan Ahmed became England’s youngest debutant and soon after the youngest men’s Test debutant to take a five-wicket haul. But just how young is he really? Age is famously just a number (in this case 18), so maybe we can get a clearer perspective on his youth by
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3 minute readWe don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway. We have a track record of getting overexcited about 18-year-old leg-spinning all-rounders. It worked out last time though, so the way we see it, it makes perfect sense to get completely overexcited again.
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< 1 minute readSeam bowler Brendan Doggett top scored for Sydney Thunder today after hitting the only ball he faced which didn’t dismiss him for four runs. The Thunder didn’t even bat long enough for extras to outscore him. All out for 15. Not a great effort. Bad enough, surely, to warrant use
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3 minute readWhile England’s hell-for-leather batting approach of the first Test was again seen in the second, it was often tempered by either (a) conditions or (b) getting out. What we can conclude from this is that pitches matter. So what can we expect from the National Stadium in Karachi for the
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