< 1 minute readAlways pick a spinner. Always. When selectors are so sure about a pitch and feel that they ‘know’ what it’s going to be like, to the extent that they don’t even countenance the possibility that a spinner might be of use, we love to see them proved wrong. Not just
Continue reading2 minute readVirender Sehwag hit a typically outrageous hundred at the weekend against a group of bowlers we’ve never heard of. Some might say that it wasn’t testing enough to warrant a return to the Test side, but Virender Sehwag doesn’t really work like that. Whether Virender Sehwag succeeds is largely down
Continue reading< 1 minute read“I realise I have been blessed by God and feel I have nurtured my talents to the best of my abilities.” No, actually what happened was that you were ‘blessed by God’ and then you threw that blessing back in His face, pausing only to give him a prolonged hand
Continue reading< 1 minute readAs many of you have gathered, we were away last week. We did say something somewhere, but we always get lots of ‘why aren’t you covering this?’ emails and comments even if we do make an ‘official’ announcement. Anyway, it seems the big news was STILL Harbhajan Singh calling Andrew
Continue reading2 minute readWe want Ian Bell back at number six in the batting order. He’s shown promise and he hasn’t disgraced himself at three, but he’s so good at six and that’s an important spot too. England forget this sometimes. An England batting line-up with Bell at six looks a lot more
Continue reading< 1 minute readGo on, do it… No, you ask… We don’t think he’s going to let us have it back.
Continue reading< 1 minute readIan! Look down! It’s right there in front of you! Here we see Paul Collingwood, Ian Bell and Matt Prior desperately searching for the ball while Mahela Jayawardene and Tillekeratne Dilshan complete an all-run hundred for Jayawardene. England weren’t to find the ball again for three straight days and all
Continue reading2 minute readDo you want the better batsman or the better wicketkeeper behind the stumps for your team? That argument’s been represented by any number of individual duels over the years. Recently though, we think you’ll all agree that the better batsman’s been winning out, in general. Blame Adam Gilchrist. He’s a
Continue reading< 1 minute readPictures like this DESERVE captions: This is what we’ve come up with: (1) Ricky Ponting with a bat in his mouth. (2) Ricky Ponting eats a cricket bat. (3) Ricky Ponting and a cricket bat and the bat’s sort of in his mouth so it sort of looks like he
Continue reading< 1 minute readEveryone knows about Dennis Lillee’s aluminium bat, but Sachin Tendulkar’s experiment with a helium-filled bat is less well known. Sachin thought the lightness of the bat would allow him to bat freer and longer, but unfortunately, as this picture shows, the excess of helium rendered the bat unusable. During the
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