< 1 minute read But not by a huge amount. Chasing 139 to win, you’d hope to get there without losing nine wickets. Then again, they didn’t lose ten, so what’s the problem? A really bad run chase is a wonderful thing. A big run chase is faintly absorbing, but for real tension you
Continue readingMonth: June 2013
2013 County Championship – chapter eight
< 1 minute read Same teams as last week. Slightly different order. 1st – Sussex Sussex remain top. A draw with Nottinghamshire just about crept into this week’s update. Highly efficient eating device, Samit Patel, made 157 for Nottinghamshire in that match, while highly efficient wicket-gathering device, Chris Jordan, took nine wickets for Sussex.
Continue readingEngland are better than Australia
< 1 minute read Great news. We still don’t have to expend mental energy thinking of post titles. It’s tempting to draw all sorts of conclusions after any match between England and Australia. We have just two things to say. The team without a spinner lost The law of scarcity dictates that Aussies will
Continue readingWest Indies are better than Pakistan
< 1 minute read This post title policy will come to a crashing halt should England lose to Australia today. An odd and absorbing match at the Oval, where only Misban-ul-Haq and the Jam Shed managed to score more than six runs in Pakistan’s innings. Misbah’s 96 not out was exactly the kind of
Continue readingIndia are better than South Africa
< 1 minute read If we’d have bothered writing a Champions Trophy preview, we might have had India down as fair weather favourites. It’s as much the lack of alternatives as anything else. India have their weaknesses, but despite the absence of some extraordinarily familiar faces they’re experienced and they play to their strengths.
Continue readingJos Buttler and the ramp shot
2 minute read A good few players try the ramp shot these days, but few score as great a proportion of their runs with it as Jos Buttler. At times he seems unaware the pitch has sides, creating a two-spoked wagon wheel behind bowler and wicketkeeper. The Buttler version of the ramp is
Continue readingDavid Gower is both right and wrong about Aussies
< 1 minute read David Gower has said in an interview in the Radio Times that Australia has no culture and that their cricketers have ‘an animal mentality’. He’s partly right, but probably for the wrong reasons. Culture This one’s lazy and wrong. Australia has plenty of culture. Arguably too much. Plenty of websites
Continue readingThe Chris Woakes quandary
3 minute read How long does it normally take James Anderson to make 28 runs? The answer is four years. Don’t scrutinise that. Today, Jimmy made 28 off 19 balls. If you didn’t see the match, that should tell you something. Run scoring was not difficult. We’d go so far as to say
Continue reading2013 County Championship – chapter seven
< 1 minute read We missed a week. We’re not apologising. 1st – Sussex Sussex have moved into the top spot after positively obliterating Somerset last week. The central figure was 33-year-old Aussie seamer, Steve Magoffin, who returned positively ludicrous match figures of 12-31. Those numbers look so unfamiliar as bowling figures you’re inclined
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