2 minute readWe’ve been here before. Australia are still the team that wins everything – this time gold at the Commonwealth Games. As far as on-the-nose victory anthems go, We Are The Champions by Queen still rules the roost. Comedy writer/actor Stephen Merchant used to talk about trying to write a rival
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2 minute readAndrew Symonds was killed in a car crash over the weekend. We feel an urge to state that this is dreadful news, which is just a fantastically redundant thing to say. We remember a few years ago reading a cricketer’s obituary and thinking to ourself that one day we’d feel
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< 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
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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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2 minute readWell that wasn’t precisely how we expected England to lose the World Cup final to Australia. Nat Sciver played one of the finest World Cup final innings you’re ever likely to see in England’s forlorn chase of 357, making 148 not out off 121 balls. The only issue was that
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2 minute readWhen we put together our Essentials Calendar last month, we figured we’d turn our attention to the World Cup at this point. We thought our gaze would shift from the West Indies v England Test series at the perfect time and we’d catch a big, exciting finish to the tournament.
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6 minute readNo man is an island and no team is either. The team you support is only part of the equation. Opponents elevate a match. Opponents like Shane Warne. Many words have been spoken and written about Shane Warne in recent weeks; about why he was such an incredible leg-spinner; about
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2 minute readWe believe every international cricket team should be issued with at least one superhero. It keeps things interesting. In the years leading up to the creation of this website, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the standard of Test cricket was pretty variable. There were – as there always are
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< 1 minute readYou’ve no doubt seen the shocking news that Shane Warne’s died. This is by no means the first gasp he’s induced from us, but it’s by far the least welcome. We will, of course, write something longer in due course, but for now we just want to acknowledge what a
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2 minute readAccording to the rankings, Australia are the number one men’s Test team. They also have the number one batter (Marnus Labuschagne) and number one bowler (Pat Cummins). They’ve achieved this without playing a single match away from home since 2019. Now Australia are in Pakistan of all places. Pakistan, where
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