3 minute readEngland are about to play Test matches against India. Maybe we’ll just concentrate on that for a bit. We don’t know about you, but these last few weeks have sapped our enthusiasm a bit. It’s not the Hundred itself, which is flawed and a bit silly, but still fundamentally cricket.
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Ridiculous Michael Clarke
< 1 minute readWe’ve done a special Ridiculous Ashes podcast about Michael Clarke stemming from our coverage of the 2013/14 series. We got writer, broadcaster and podcaster Adam Collins on to help us because he knows more about Michael Clarke than we do. We never really ‘got’ Michael Clarke. The thing that baffled
Continue readingWhy Liam Livingstone’s huge six v Pakistan was just about the most satisfying shot ever played and also why it was not
2 minute readIn a world where every shot that drops just over the rope is MASSIVE and the ones that get caught by spectators sitting in the first row are OUT OF THE GROUND, it becomes quite hard to properly acknowledge the shot played by Liam Livingstone off Pakistan’s Haris Rauf at
Continue readingNetflix’s This Could Go Anywhere with Phil Tufnell and Brendon McCullum – a preview
4 minute readPiss off golf. It is a phenomenon we will never be able to wrap our head around. Cricketers liking and talking about golf. No offence to golf – which is a perfectly decent sport if you want to fake-befriend late-middle-aged men who have the power to give you a promotion
Continue readingFive bonkers moments from the 2019 Cricket World Cup final – but which was the most uniquely cricket?
6 minute read2019 Cricket World Cup final, England v New Zealand Cricket is at its very purest and best when it’s completely village; when the bowlers are batting and people are being run-out and everyone has to keep checking the laws and playing regulations because they don’t have the faintest idea what’s
Continue readingJames Vince and the Gower Law
2 minute readHe can bat, James Vince. That’s half the problem. James Vince innings come in many sizes, but there are only really two types. There are the ones where he’s dismissed and a much smaller number where he isn’t. The latter are tauntingly incomplete. Half-written poems, half-painted landscapes, unfinished symphonies. The
Continue readingDid you see… James Vince’s silky, casual departure?
3 minute readIf there’s one thing we can all take from the weekend’s sporting events, it’s that England are an unstoppable winning machine. The various members of England’s one-day squad are currently sitting around their houses doing really not very much at all. And England are still winning. They just can’t stop.
Continue readingEngland’s squad for the Pakistan ODIs doesn’t look *that* weird
2 minute readEngland have binned an entire one-day international squad and picked a different one. You’d think that might have resulted in some barrel-scraping. But it hasn’t really. Cannon Fodder was the first videogame we can remember that featured near-constant character turnover. It was right there in the name. Jools would get
Continue readingMute Flower, Rankin the Rancor and Angry Anderson
< 1 minute readSeries two of the Ridiculous Ashes draws to a close this week with a look at the Sydney Test of the 2013/14 series and England’s traditional final-Test-of-an-away-Ashes chaos. This was the match in which Gary Ballance, Boyd Rankin and Scott Borthwick all made their Test debuts. It was also a
Continue readingIt’s the England Second XI captain we feel sorry for (and also Chris ‘Dante Hicks’ Silverwood)
< 1 minute readYou may have heard that England have had to magic-up a whole new one-day squad for the Pakistan series after the first-choice one was sidelined by a bunch of coronavirus cases. Well done everyone – but that’s the easy bit. “We’re in unprecedented territory, in terms of replacing an entire
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