Posted by It was a hell of a year. Probably. Who can honestly remember 12 months’ worth of stuff, let alone assign it some sort of value by which the year as a whole can be compared to previous ones? Here’s a bunch of cricket things that happened in 2024 anyway – good, bad and peculiar. If you’re anything like us, you’ll have forgotten loads of them.
1. David Warner massively diminished Australia’s dislikeability
By retiring. With a final, postmodern feat of annoyance, Warner committed perhaps his greatest-ever sin by rendering the resultant Warner-free Australia Test team honestly quite likeable for the most part. Unforgiveable. This. Will not. STAAAAAAAND!
2. Steve Smith became an opening batter
And not too long after returned to the middle-order, as we outlined in our subsequent, balanced report, headlined, “Failing failure Steve Smith to hide down the order after abject failure as Test opener.”
3. Shamar Joseph gave us an almost-perfect cricket moment
Not every victory is equal. The final act of the West Indies victory over Australia brought a perfect dismissal, a perfect celebration, a perfect story and a perfect subtext. If we were ranking the moments in this article by impact and importance, this one would be number one.
4. England picked Tom Hartley and it was absolutely disastrous but then somehow a colossal success
With 40 first-class wickets at 36.57 to his name, Hartley shaped up as the grizzled veteran when he was called into the England Test squad alongside ingenu, Shoaib Bashir. When he first came on to bowl, he was greeted in time-honoured ‘new spinner playing against India’ fashion. His first delivery was dispatched over the ropes, as was another a ball or two later. After three overs he’d conceded 34, but Ben Stokes kept him on, sending a message that the spinner’s inclusion wasn’t a mistake and he didn’t need to be hidden or protected. Figures of 2-130 off 25 overs in India’s first innings were then followed by a match-winning return of 7-62 in the second.
5. Jasprit Bumrah yorked Ollie Pope
Pope was fresh off the performance of a lifetime when Bumrah did this to him.
6. Rohit Sharma did a cartoonish angry hat throw
Rohit isn’t an especially demonstrative man. It took Sarfaraz Khan getting run out because Ravindra Jadeja was so keen to get off 99 to drive him to this.
7. Ben Stokes bowled a cricket ball
Newsworthy because he hadn’t done so for nine months. Doubly newsworthy because, despite his rustiness and the fact the score was 275-1, he knocked back Rohit Sharma’s off stump with it.
8. An international cricket stadium popped up
The Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York was hastily erected for the T20 World Cup. Alas, it turned out that shipping 30cm-deep trays of soil and grass halfway round the world wasn’t the best way to create a cricket pitch. Scores were low and after just a couple of months of life, it was deconstructed again.
9. Someone shot Afghanistan’s Gulbadin Naib
In the hamstring. At a crucial moment in a World Cup match when Bangladesh were behind the required run rate and rain was very much thinking about falling. He got over it though. Within half an hour, he was taking a wicket. Maybe he was just taking a rare opportunity for a lie-down because after just four hours sleep, Afghanistan had to catch a flight for the semi-final they would go on to lose.
10. Jasprit Bumrah wasn’t named player of the match in the World Cup final
Absolute A-grade nonsense. At least someone’s willing to give him an award.
11. James Anderson was forcefully invited to retire
Anderson’s final match doubled-up as Gus Atkinson’s debut. The new man took a wicket second ball, was at one point on a hat trick and finished with 7-45. In the second innings he took 5-61. Only his celebrations disappointed. In short, life moves on. By September Atkinson was bothamming his way to a hundred and a five-for in the same Test match against Sri Lanka and by December, he’d snaffled that Test hat trick.
12. Graham Thorpe took his own life
Apologies for the shift in tone, but ‘worst’ is in the headline. In August, having ceased responding to messages a few months earlier, Graham Thorpe killed himself. Thorpe was a big part of our formative cricket-watching years. This is how we’ll remember him.
ANDYSMANCLUB is a men’s suicide prevention charity, offering free-to-attend support groups. Alternatively, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or by email at jo@samaritans.org
13. South Africa picked some “strapping boys”
It was a dizzying year for South Africa, who went from renouncing/disrespecting/destroying Test cricket by sending a third-choice squad to New Zealand in February to qualifying for the World Test Championship final a few months later.
14. Brendon McCullum got a new hat
Although he’s not actually worn it yet.
15. England picked Josh Hull
It really was quite the year for England Test selection. As well as Hartley, there was Shoaib Bashir, who’d taken 10 first-class wickets at 67 runs apiece when he made his debut, and then Josh Hull, whose first-class average of 62.75 was actually heading in the wrong direction when he was picked thanks to a 2024 summer in which he’d been averaging 182.50 in the second division. Hull’s debut also brought Dan Lawrence’s final outing as a Test opener – a role that made about as much sense as picking Jacob Bethell as a number three. It was all very colourful, but Gus Atkinson, Jamie Smith and Brydon Carse also made their Test debuts in 2024, so there were definitely more hits than misses.
16. India won a Test inside (the last) two days
Two day Tests are not unheard of, but it’s usually the first two. They make a start, both teams collapse, time is left unused. India’s victory over Bangladesh was noteworthy for the fact that only 35 overs were possible in the first three days and yet India recalibrated their approach and went for the victory anyway. As we said at the time, full credit to Ben Duckett for their efforts…
17. Harry Brook hit a triple hundred
You don’t get many of them. Our view is that we are most likely already witnessing peak Harry Brook. Enjoy it while you still can. His attitude to England being 50-4 against New Zealand later in the year was a particular highlight.
18. A butterfly tried to run out Zak Crawley
It failed.
19. Mohammed Siraj made his way onto India’s top scorers podium with a single shot
The number 11 was responsible for a quarter of India’s four boundaries in the team’s first innings of the series against New Zealand. It would be wrong to say things got worse from there for the home team, but they did find multiple different ways to lose Test matches and were ultimately defeated 3-0. Buoyed by his personal performance, Siraj made an appearance as a nightwatcher a month later, only to be given out LBW first ball.
20. Pakistan settled on a two-man bowling attack
After that whole Harry Brook thing, Pakistan decided the smart thing to do would be to drop all their best-known bowlers. They replaced them with Noman Ali and Sajid Khan and possibly some other guys as well. It didn’t really matter who else because Noman and Sajid did absolutely all of the bowling and wicket-taking from then on. Across two Tests and three innings, they bowled for 89.5 overs unchanged.
21. Marnus Labuschagne MADE VIRAT KOHLI PAY
Virat Kohli dropped Marnus Labuschagne second ball. An hour and a half later, Labuschagne was still at the crease, punishing India, with two runs to his name. He didn’t actually make any further runs, but he also didn’t get out to Jasprit Bumrah until the second innings, even though he’d pretty much constantly looked like doing so.
22. Tom Latham fled from the ball
Fresh from beating India in India, New Zealand set themselves the challenge of beating England without taking any catches. This wilful catch avoidance peaked with an effort by Tom Latham, who first parried the ball straight up before sprinting away from the exact spot where it was going to land. Series-wise, England beat New Zealand, who’d beaten India, who’d beaten Bangladesh, who’d beaten Pakistan, who’d beaten England, who’d beaten Sri Lanka, who’d beaten New Zealand.
23. Virat Kohli’s vision deteriorated
The concern is not that Virat Kohli has lost his edge, but that it is now the only part of the bat he ever uses. Perhaps his vision’s gone downhill. How else to explain the mid-pitch collision with Australia’s really-highly-noticeable David Warner replacement, Sam Konstas?
In the unlikely event that you’re not short of time by this point, you could go and read some of our other features. These things take a while to write, so if you’re feeling mad, generous, or ideally mad-generous, please go and take a look at our Patreon crowdfunding campaign.
