< 1 minute readHow are the next generation of England cricketers going to get the experience they need now that the Home Office has brought in legislation that targets Kolpak players? How will young South Africans get the necessary experience of English conditions to help them earn their place in the Test side?
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James Anderson knows the rules
< 1 minute readWe saw an article titled ‘Anderson wants to captain England’ and we immediately thought: ‘He’ll be lucky’. We thought this for the exact same reasons that Anderson himself thought it: “As a fast bowler and from the North, I suppose I’m very unlikely to get a look in.” This is
Continue readingStephen Moore embiggens himself
< 1 minute readThere’s a great interview with Lancashire’s new signing Stephen Moore on the ECB site. If you didn’t know anything about him, you’d come away thinking he was being unfairly kept out of the England side. It’s littered with comments about how he’s ‘ready’. One of our favourite bits is the
Continue readingWhat is Matthew Hoggard?
< 1 minute readMatthew Hoggard has been released by Yorkshire. He was offered a contract at the start of the season and it sounds to us like he weighed it up for a bit too long. Hoggard’s understandably pissed off about this, because after 15 years at Yorkshire, he hasn’t had a chance
Continue readingKevin Pietersen ready to abandon England so he can get more money elsewhere
< 1 minute readThat’s an exaggerated version of the kind of headline that’s been cropping up after Kevin Pietersen’s interview with the Observer. It’s a shame that’s the angle that’s taken, because actually Pietersen’s got a lot of sense in him and it gets washed away by all the indignant, semi-xenophobic spitting that
Continue readingEoin Morgan – keep him at five or six
< 1 minute readEoin Morgan can play mental reverse sweeps and ping shots into someone’s picnic off the weighty part of his bat, but we’re most impressed by the fact that he seems largely unarsed about playing international cricket. He plays straight, he wanders down the pitch, maybe he edges the ball, but
Continue readingHow Joe Denly got to play for England
2 minute readThis isn’t specifically about Joe Denly. He’s just the example. It’s about being a young English cricketer and what you have to do to play for the national side. It’s also about Australia’s wicketkeeper, Tim Paine. Paine and Denly are just starting their careers and have been opening the batting
Continue readingWhy are England so bad at one-day cricket?
2 minute readYou can come up with immediate reasons, like how badly they’ve been batting of late, but take a step back. Why are England so consistently bad at one-day cricket? We’ve been thinking about this a bit and our theory revolves around player rotation. One-day internationals, more than Test cricket, revolve
Continue readingEngland’s one-day all-rounders
< 1 minute readAre they going to win a game with the bat? Are they going to win a game with the ball? Luke Wright Dimitri Mascarenhas Tim Bresnan Adil Rashid There’s room for players who chip in, rather than deciding matches on their own, but there seem to be altogether too many
Continue readingGraeme Swann interviews
< 1 minute readYou want Graeme Swann to be man of the match every time he plays, because he’s head and shoulders above everyone else in world cricket when it comes to the post-match interview. Today’s offering after a consolation win that followed six consecutive defeats: “Everyone talks about this big word ‘momentum’.
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