4 minute readA lot of England fans wouldn’t have stayed with Test cricket through the 90s if it hadn’t been for Graham Thorpe. He was a class above at a time when the team – and more importantly the supporters – needed it most. It is profoundly hollowing to hear that he
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4 minute readOur suspicion is that England’s white ball teams will get where they need to go sooner if Jos Buttler takes on the role of coach as well as captain. Bear with us on this. England have had both a bad World Cup and a meh World Cup inside the last
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3 minute readWhen it comes to seam bowling, speed is not everything – but it is something. Reverse swing is something too. Mark Wood delivered the best combination of somethings against the West Indies yesterday. Fast reverse swing is just such a fundamentally wonderful thing. It’s so straightforward, so obvious. Its crushing
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7 minute readWhat did you do just then? Did you just glance at a TV when some cricket was on? Did you invest 10 seconds setting the on-screen player names alongside the three-letter initialisms in the hope of working out what competition it was? That’s enough. You’re a viewer now – a
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3 minute readBefore the English domestic season recommenced, we picked out the four quick bowlers we felt were most likely to represent ‘the next generation’ following the retirement of Stuart Broad. (We didn’t at that point know that James Anderson was also on his way out.) Precisely none of these bowlers have
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< 1 minute readOllie Pope made a jaunty hundred, so you’re supposed to talk about that. It’s just that Ollie Pope doesn’t open the batting the way Ben Duckett opens the batting. Ben Duckett at times talks such A-grade bollocks that it can be easy to forget that opening the batting like an
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3 minute readThere was a maudlin quality to the closing stages of the first Test between England and the West Indies, but the sun is out, another Test is about to begin and there is much to look forward to. 1. England absolutely pissing away the new ball This is quite unlikely
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2 minute readHow do you cope with loss? You take it one step at a time, of course. What does that mean in practical terms? Why not pretend that James Anderson’s got a bit of a niggle this week? And then for the next Test, just do the same again. Jimmy’s not
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3 minute readToday it seems fitting to run this magnificent graphical tribute to James Anderson’s batting, which was sent in by longstanding-but-intermittent King Cricket contributor, Bert, who writes…. Days like this don’t come along very often. We are witnessing the end of one of the greatest eras of sport this country has
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2 minute readWe don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway. Much to admire, but can Gus Atkinson play the reverse sweep? And how grumpy will he be when England’s fielders revert to shelling one chance in three, rather than velcroing-in everything remotely within
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