2 minute read The Impact Player substitution thing suggests that the IPL has been reduced to rehashing old ideas in its search for eye-catching innovations/gimmicks. How about being a little more creative? How about letting batters use two bats? When we saw the shot of Ben Stokes above, we immediately thought of a
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10 minute read With his thin hair and love of whole milk, you could easily mistake Ben Stokes for a baby. But Ben Stokes is not a baby. Ben Stokes is a full grown adult man who plays cricket for a living. He plays it very well with a particular penchant for seeing
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6 minute read Our 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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5 minute read The second Test was “a differently played game” according to Ben Stokes. It still resulted in England winning in Pakistan though, which is not a thing that had happened too often until this month. The match has left us with quite a few half-baked thoughts rolling around our largely empty
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3 minute read It was a win that England were racing to catch from the outset. The Test began with Zak Crawley hitting three fours off Naseem Shah’s opening over and it ended with the light meters out. Ben Stokes’ men never really slowed in between. Even if England hadn’t won, you’d have
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2 minute read It’s good to be ambitious and open minded and not hidebound by the past. It’s maybe not quite so smart to talk about how you’re going to rewrite how Test cricket is played – particularly if you’re England. Ben Stokes has mostly spoken well since he took on the captaincy,
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2 minute read ‘Managing’ means two things. It means taking decisions and directing matters so that everything hopefully progresses more smoothly. It also means bumbling through in the face of various problems in the vague hope you’ll just get through it all somehow. Tired of the second approach, Ben Stokes has switched to
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4 minute read “It’s a game of failure, batting,” said Joe Root five minutes after this Test finished. The statement was on the one hand very sage and on the other just plain wrong. Four times in a row England have chased a lot of runs to win. This would be remarkable even
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2 minute read If you’re attentive and possessed of a decent memory, you’ll clock that the headline above is a very obvious reference to our December article, Root and Silverwood have the Jack Leach they created. There’s a contrast in man management here and if you read that article again, you’ll easily see
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3 minute read Everything’s amazing and fun and positive under the new England captain. Remember that previous guy? Man was he a miserable arsehole. Didn’t have a clue, did he? Whatever happened to him? Sometimes you accidentally reveal something about the past. We remember being on this cookery course in Thailand once with
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