< 1 minute readMatthew Hayden 12, Ricky Ponting 0, Mike Hussey 0. Bring ’em down. Bring ’em down to a sensible level. Those three think they’re so good. They think they can bat in any conditions against any bowler. They think they’re ‘all that’, but they’re not ‘all that’. They are, at most,
Continue reading< 1 minute readWe’re not interested in sponsorship really. However, we do hate people with corporate titles and we outright loathe meaningless PR speak, so we did actually make the effort to read the news about Vodafone not sponsoring England any more. We also hate Vodafone because they have ‘-fone’ in their name,
Continue reading1 minute readIndia couldn’t have won the first Test without Sachin Tendulkar’s contribution, but we’re a great believer in sportsfolk affecting the opposition and influencing matches that way. We wrote about how Virender Sehwag’s approach to batting turns bowlers into smeared-panted long-hop machines, but we reckon he transformed the whole England side
Continue reading< 1 minute readWatching Sachin Tendulkar bat is always a disappointment for us. It’s not his fault. He’s had the decency to be a batting genius and we can’t really ask much more of the man. The fault lies with our own expectations. When you watch Sachin Tendulkar at work, you expect to
Continue reading< 1 minute readWhat a match. A victory for cricket being about hitting a ball with a bat as well, not it being about some middle-aged men in suits planning what car to buy next – which is what the game can often feel like these days. Nobody cares about your status symbols,
Continue reading2 minute readWhen Virender Sehwag bats, bowlers go to pieces. It’s a good approach. Viv Richards used to do something similar. He’d blaze away when he first came in and then when the field went back, he’d change his approach. The fielding side were on the back foot, he’d got his eye
Continue reading< 1 minute readJerome Taylor had a Test average of 13.66 before this match, a first-class average of 12.61 and a top score of 40. Somehow he hit 106 against New Zealand. After his hundred, Taylor said: “It was the sort of pitch that, once you got in, it got easier.” How did
Continue reading< 1 minute readIt doesn’t make the heart race, but it is brilliant. Andrew Strauss now averages 61.85 in Tests in India. Paul Collingwood averages 68.20. Kevin Pietersen averages 27.62. Sometimes you need to clog your way to success and Strauss and Collingwood can bunt singles with the best of them. Strauss has
Continue reading< 1 minute readIt strikes us that New Zealand are a side who can benefit from a good old-fashioned batting line-up with a trio of blockers at the top of the order followed by the strokemakers. Kiwi batsmen do tend to be one or the other and an early stultathon will set the
Continue reading< 1 minute readZaheer Khan deserves better than 2-36 and we won’t begrudge him if he gets more wickets. There are talented bowlers out there who have unflattering career records and Zaheer’s one of them. It seems wrong to watch a bowler unveil such a range of skills and then see that he’s
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