3 minute readWe very much hate announcements of announcements. You know – when they announce that an announcement is going to be made and also exactly what that announcement will be. Hopefully by the time you read this Ben Stokes will have officially been announced as England Test captain and we can
Continue readingMonth: April 2022
Five Test wicketkeepers who quite often didn’t actually do any wicketkeeping
6 minute readIf you want to be highly regarded as a wicketkeeper-batter, one of the smartest things you can do is not actually keep wicket in a whole load of Test matches. At what point do you become a wicketkeeper? How frequently do you have to don pads and gloves and chunter
Continue readingJosh Bohannon, Matt Parkinson and the mayfly that is Lancashire’s best team in years
2 minute readLast week might have been the first time since the 1990s when we didn’t think Lancashire could have improved their XI by including Glen Chapple. Chapple is getting on a bit these days, but he was getting on a bit for quite a large proportion of his magnificent playing career
Continue readingSo that idea to crown an overall three-format county champion then…
3 minute readIt’s time for the next exciting instalment of the saga we like to call, ‘you may add to the county cricket season, but you may never take away‘. There is no idea so clear and simple that county cricket can’t completely misunderstand and misapply it. The Mail has reported that
Continue readingThis is surely the very worst place to get an assessment of Rob Key’s suitability for his new England job – but here’s one anyway
5 minute readWhen we think about some of the decidedly non-newsworthy Rob Key related things we have reported on down the years, it is pretty clear to us that we will have to say something about him becoming the managing director of England men’s cricket too. To give a handful of largely-picked-at-random
Continue readingJoe Root steps down to give England an exciting new problem
5 minute readThe England Test team is going to remain awash with problems for quite some time to come. The best you can hope for as a fan is that they at least keep those problems fresh and interesting. The Joe Root captaincy problem was getting a bit stale, so at least
Continue readingThe only story you need to know about Australia’s new coach Andrew McDonald
< 1 minute readEvery cricketer has been out for a duck, but Andrew McDonald might be the only player who’s ever been physically assaulted by one. It happened in 2010 when he was walking through Queen’s Gardens in Perth with then team-mate Aaron Finch. “We walked too close to the ducklings and the
Continue readingIs it fair that Hampshire have Mohammad Abbas in the County Championship?
2 minute readThere is much debate about fairness in county cricket at the minute. Is it fair that Nottinghamshire – who finished third in the Championship last year – have to play in division two based on how they performed in 2019? Is it fair that teams in the top flight won’t
Continue readingThis is the way the county cricket season begins, not with a bang – and we’re happy with that
4 minute readNot every tournament needs an opening ceremony. We’ll let you in on a secret. We are not a fast waker-upper. Our daughter sometimes wanders into our room at an unconscionable hour and announces, “it’s morning,” in an indignant tone. It is impossible for us to convey the full horror of
Continue readingSeparate teams? What might a world of cricket format specialists actually look like?
9 minute readWay, way back in 2006, in our first year of writing this website, we described the international fixture list as being fatter than a TV-loving, chip-munching hippo with an abnormally slow metabolism. We probably should have left ourself with more room for manoeuvre because where does that leave us now?
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