< 1 minute readIf you envision the next Chanderpaul, the first thing you picture is a younger version of the current Chanderpaul – a crabby, left-handed batsman who has Chanderpaul’s face and Chanderpaul’s oversized cricket gear. What you don’t picture is a two metre tall right-hander who’s actually a bowler. Nevertheless, Jason Holder
Continue readingMonth: April 2015
Gary Ballance sloughs his skin
< 1 minute readGary 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 readingThe day of Jermaine Blackwood and James Tredwell
2 minute readWe feel moderately confident naming it this, because it doesn’t seem so likely that there’ll be another such day when not just one, but both of these players have a sizeable impact on a Test match. James Tredwell, for one, might never play another Test. This is sad and if
Continue readingLike Stuart Broad… but different
2 minute readIf wealthy, middle-aged American women’s faces teach us anything, it is that people do not go under the knife and then return much as they ever were. Don’t seam bowlers usually have to prove themselves again after surgery? Stuart Broad had a knee problem. It wasn’t anything too debilitating. It
Continue readingThe England cricket team is slightly diseased
2 minute readWe’re not sure what the disease is called. Nor can we tell whether it’s a mild virus that you soon overcome or a more serious illness, like rigor mortis. Either way, symptoms include caution, timidity and a fear of failure. Observing these qualities, relatives yearn for the patient to display
Continue readingWho do England rely on? And is that a problem?
3 minute readWith live cricket broadcast at a reasonable hour, a Test tour of the West Indies is one of our favourites when it comes to watching the game on TV. It’s a shame it comes hot on the heels of the World Cup, ahead of an Ashes and in conflict with
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Richie Benaud – the greatest commentator of them all
2 minute readMourning everyone. Richie Benaud has died and a small part of our brain that responds to blue skies, lengthening days and Test cricket has also died. You can’t spend as long in someone’s company as most of us have spent listening to Richie and not feel like you know them.
Continue readingBring out your dead – the mortician’s cart rolls by the ECB
2 minute readWe’ve a slight concern that the ECB’s new chief executive referred to ‘the England Cricket Department’ in announcing Paul Downton’s sacking, as if English cricket really were a corporation in which broad, curved desks were every bit as important pieces of equipment as bats and balls. Nevertheless, it’s hard not
Continue readingThe multi-coloured Excel monster that is the English domestic season
2 minute readEach year, The Cricketer produces a wall chart detailing all of the summer fixtures. It works well as a visual representation of the way the English domestic game is organised. White space is in short supply. It is as much an assault on the senses as a paper wall chart
Continue readingMiddlesex v Durham at Lord’s – match report
3 minute readGed writes: Late season, I always try to take in a day of county cricket with my old friend, Charley “The Gent” Malloy. It helps us both to prepare for the inevitable winter withdrawal symptoms to come. The cricket season starts earlier and ends later each year, yet it seems
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