4 minute read In another universe, these five cricketers are the backbone of the England Test team. A handful of players make it in Test cricket. Others get picked and aren’t good enough. Then there are the weird ones; the ones who get a few games, look the business and then for some
Continue readingTag: Gary Ballance
Gary Ballance is making hundreds again and you’re going to have to take a position on that
2 minute read
Continue readingIs Joe Root brave enough to bowl Gary Ballance?
< 1 minute read The great tragedy of England’s six-man bowling attack is that Gary Ballance never gets to bowl. We reckon that Joe Root and Keaton Jennings are likely to get on before him as well, so realistically he’s ninth choice. England will need to have an extraordinarily bad day before we see
Continue readingGary Ballance climbs wearily onto the treadmill
2 minute read When a player is dropped during a home series, there’s only one way back into the side. They perform well in first-class cricket, they tell themselves they’ve proved the doubters wrong and they return mentally buoyed. When you’re dropped on tour, things can pan out differently. Gary Ballance has just
Continue readingWhy Gary Ballance’s 2016 return to the England side was too easy for him
3 minute read England dropped Gary Ballance before the third Ashes Test of 2015 after a run of form that wasn’t actually all that dreadful with the benefit of hindsight. He had passed 30 once in his last 10 innings and had been bowled five times. People said he struggled against good quick
Continue readingIs Gary Ballance back?
2 minute read It’s a reference to a headline pun that’s overused on this website but which isn’t itself a pun. Jokes don’t come much weaker than that. Except for all our other ones. Is Gary Ballance back? Sport is brutally cold and England won’t go into the first Test of the summer
Continue readingGary Ballance sloughs his skin
< 1 minute read Gary Ballance doesn’t so much score Test hundreds as cut them. Short and wide, fair enough, but our Gary seems to play the shot to middle stump half volleys as well. Fair enough. Whatever works. Ballance isn’t the only England player who appears to be sloughing his horrifically stained World
Continue readingFour bowlers, five runs and one Gary Ballance
2 minute read After winning the previous Test with four-and-a-bit bowlers, India could have gone either way for this one. Unsurprisingly, they went with four bowlers, not five. Sometimes you can determine a lot from these fifty-fifty calls and MS Dhoni does seem to be a bit of a ‘pick the extra batsman’
Continue readingGary Ballance bares his teeth
< 1 minute read A lot. It seems to be his default facial expression while batting. It’s a little disconcerting. But on the plus side, we’ve already started thinking to ourself: “At least Ballance is still in,” as if he’s the most reliable of the England batsmen. Like Jonathan Trott, you don’t really feel
Continue readingThe doughy tenacity of Gary Ballance and why he makes Test cricket feel more significant
< 1 minute read We’re a day late with this really, but maybe it’s taken that long to fully sink in. Gary Ballance is our new favourite batsman. We know Sam Robson scored a hundred, but we’ve not yet warmed to him in quite the same way. There were too many edges. Ballance, despite
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