4 minute readHold us here, Test cricket. Hold us here in uncertainty; at the sour spot of maybe or maybe not. Leave us here a while to grow overfamiliar with the sight of Ravindra Jadeja turning down another single because it’s still quite early in the over. We all know that a
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2 minute readRun-outs are always dramatic, but doubly so when the batter’s on 99. That unignorable need for a single just brings a whole new dimension to the drama. The burning desire to get another run to get you to 100 can even result in collateral damage, like the loss of your
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2 minute readIt must be getting on for 10 years now that touring Test teams have been arriving in India expecting to have to combat R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja on pitches that will more than likely turn a bit. No-one’s really worked it out yet. 10 years, man! 10 years! And
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3 minute readIt’s common to assume that we accurately value all-rounders as the sum of their parts, but more often than not, we value each part separately and sneer at each of them a bit. Ravindra Jadeja is a pretty good example. To many people, Jadeja is a fill-in bowler who takes
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2 minute readIf we could just ruin the ending of the sort-of-okay action film Braven for you, it climaxes with Jason Momoa throwing himself and the bad guy over a cliff but cleverly snagging his own foot in a bear trap tied to a tree so he doesn’t fall. That’s the kind of death-or-glory,
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6 minute readSpecialist bowlers having to bat is one of the greatest things in the world because batting is absolutely nothing like bowling. It is like a javelin thrower training for years and years to perfect their art only to turn up at the Olympics and be told that they also have
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Continue reading2 minute readThere are two main reasons why cricketers are annoying. (1) They play for your team and they aren’t very good. (2) They play for the opposition and they are very good. The first is self-evident. The second is rather more nuanced and deserves a little bit of elaboration. So let’s
Continue reading2 minute readImagine you have a good knife and a really shitty knife. You regularly use both, but the shitty one’s kind of shitty. It can cope with cheese and maybe a courgette, but you’d never risk it on an onion or something like that. One day you want to slice a
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