< 1 minute read We wrote this title in the hope that we’d have some really funny thoughts to share once we started staring at the great expanse of whiteness where the body of the article’s supposed to go. Nothing happened, so we checked Twitter and apparently Graeme Smith’s going to retire. Let this
Continue readingTag: Retirement
The case for Kallis to be considered the best of the lot
3 minute read Before we begin, let us just say that we don’t believe in comparing players or ranking them. We’re now going to do precisely that as a kind of academic exercise, primarily to piss off a load of people who will always hold Jacques Kallis in somewhat lower regard than many
Continue readingGraeme Swann was more than a quarter of an attack
3 minute read Graeme Swann’s retirement seems somehow emblematic of England’s current state. It sounds like he’s been aware of reduced efficacy for a while now, but could put it to the back of his mind so long as England were winning. Now they’re losing and the ensuing clarity has shunted a memorable
Continue readingContinuing to miss Sachin Tendulkar
3 minute read Considering he’s been the highest profile player for pretty much the whole time we’ve been following cricket, we’ve missed an awful lot of Sachin Tendulkar’s career. We went to the match in which he scored his first Test century, but we didn’t see him bat. Then, for a long time
Continue readingSteve Harmison retires – a tribute to the lolloping ganglatron of mental fragility
3 minute read Odd that it should be Simon Jones who’s last man standing from that 2005 Ashes-winning bowling attack. Ashley Giles retired so long ago we wrote about it on a different web domain, Matthew Hoggard retired last month and while we saw Andrew Flintoff in Didsbury yesterday looking fitter than he
Continue readingDo you remember Matthew Hoggard the Test cricketer? Do you ACTUALLY REMEMBER?
3 minute read Have you ever been at a funeral where they’ve skipped through the first 80 years of the person’s life before really dwelling on recent history? Half a century of adult life is summed up by counting progeny and then all the eulogy goes on about is how you liked a
Continue readingHow do you rate Mike Hussey?
< 1 minute read What happens to Mike Hussey’s nickname now? Can you call someone Mr Cricket if their job is to inspect construction projects to confirm they comply with building regulations? We’re assuming that’s the kind of thing Mike Hussey will do after retiring – something dull that will allow him to be
Continue readingRicky Ponting’s batting average and face
3 minute read Take a look at this face. Tell us you don’t instantly hate that face. You could pretty accurately track the progress of Ricky Ponting’s career by our opinion of his face at various points in time. It started badly. He made his first Test hundred in his first Ashes innings
Continue readingAndrew Strauss’s captaincy style
2 minute read Andrew Strauss retires from cricket. If Nasser Hussain was ‘do as I say’ and Michael Vaughan was ‘relax and play how you want’ then Strauss was ‘for Christ’s sake, don’t do anything silly’. He was a bit establishment for our tastes and his interviews were even more bland and predictable
Continue readingWhy we liked Brett Lee
2 minute read Test bowling average v England: 40.61 – what’s not to like? Yes, it’s one of those weird statistics, but Brett Lee actually wasn’t all that destructive in the Ashes. There was theatre and tension every time he came onto bowl, but all that happened was that the batsman thought: “Ooh,
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