< 1 minute readAfter his lower order skittering, Graeme Swann claimed that Mushtaq Ahmed was his batting mentor. Graeme Swann’s pleasingly unafraid to tell outright lies every now and again, but we think he was serious about this. Mushtaq Ahmed shouldn’t be anybody’s batting mentor. You can’t just find the nearest person who’s
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Kevin Pietersen’s stupid shot
< 1 minute readNot interested. Some say it was irresponsible. Some say it’s the way he plays. This is not the first time people have pored over a Pietersen dismissal. Kevin Pietersen plays a lot of stupid shots. He gets away with almost all of them. His dismissals often look worse than those
Continue readingAshes players to watch tomorrow
2 minute readYou might have noticed a certain jaded world-weariness about our recent Ashes coverage as a result of mindless media coverage smotheration. It feels right that we should return to our natural demeanour at a time when everyone else is bouncing about like there’s a lot of bouncing to be done
Continue readingAshes 2005 5th Test at The Oval
2 minute readFor many people, this was the moment when England won the 2005 Ashes, but we didn’t see it like that. We actually found the whole Test – and the last day in particular – a slightly maudlin experience. It was the last Test, a great Ashes series was nearly over
Continue readingAshes 2005 4th Test at Trent Bridge
2 minute readWe’ve been to some duff days of cricket, but Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff were at the crease for the start of day two and to say we were looking forward to it was an understatement. While we were queueing to get in, Pietersen was caught behind. If we’d got
Continue readingAshes 2005 3rd Test at Old Trafford
2 minute readWe went to one day of this third Test of the 2005 Ashes series. We went the day it rained. At the time, we lived a couple of stops away on the tram, so we just waited at home until we knew when play was due to start and then
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Ashes 2005 2nd Test at Edgbaston
4 minute readIn the middle of the Edgbaston Test, we genuinely thought to ourself that cricket had got too good. We actually thought that cricket needed to be worse so that we could appreciate it properly. There was so much brilliant cricket to take in and not enough time to process things.
Continue readingAshes 2005 1st Test at Lord’s
2 minute readLooking back with hindsight, the most bizarre aspect of the first Test in the 2005 Ashes series was the fact that people thought Ian Bell and Graham Thorpe would keep Kevin Pietersen out of the team. In the end, England made the brave decision. England lost this match by some
Continue readingAshes 2005 Twenty20 international and one day series
2 minute readPeople forget about the one-day series that preceded the 2005 Ashes, but they were a key part of it. They were ingeniously scheduled before the Test series, so that tension mounted. In 2009, they’re afterwards, like vegetable soup after a six-course meal. Twenty20 match England won the Ashes because they
Continue readingAndrew Flintoff’s strengths as a bowler
< 1 minute readBit of pace, bit of bounce, good control and then there’s what the lazy among us refer to as ‘presence’; or worse, an ‘X-factor’. The concept of an X-factor always pisses us off. It’s not that there’s some mystical, unknowable attribute. It’s just that you haven’t bothered to find out
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