2 minute readAs in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. Is Adil Rashid a bowler who can take wickets when others cannot? Yeah, probably. Sometimes. Does Adil Rashid’s selection for the Test squad having previously jacked in red ball cricket maybe raise a couple of awkward questions? Erm, yeah, probably.
Continue readingCategory: England
The three main changes you can always make to the England Test team
2 minute readWhen a Test squad’s due to be announced, everyone normally has a default XI in mind and then we all make swaps according to our own prejudices. Typically, everyone wants to make between one and three changes. Change No 1 is when you replace the rubbish batsman you hate with
Continue readingWe made up a word and Wisden published it
< 1 minute readThe word is ‘schedusfaction’ and it means ‘satisfaction with the scheduling of a cricket tour’. We didn’t realise the world had use for such a word until this summer. England are about to play a Test series against India. You may be aware of this and that might be because
Continue readingVirat Kohli’s ‘I’ve just been bowled by Adil Rashid’ face
< 1 minute readWhen we wrote about what it’s like to be Virat Kohli, we didn’t for one minute think that there would be any overlap with what it’s like to be Mike Gatting. Turns out there is. Virat Kohli and Mike Gatting both do a thing where they make an astonished face
Continue readingPlease can we very quickly talk about that very fine MS Dhoni innings in the last one-dayer?
2 minute readImagine a tiger hunting a deer. He’s squatting down in the undergrowth, taut and primed to strike. The deer is ambling around just in front of him, oblivious. When the deer gets close enough, the tiger will leap out and bite him in the neck. The deer mills around. He
Continue readingThere are many different ways to get out to Kuldeep Yadav
2 minute readHere’s Jason Roy getting it not-right again Kuldeep Yadav. Here’s Roy’s follow-through. You may notice that he’s hitting the ball in the air while simultaneously falling on his arse. It seems safe to assume this probably wasn’t the outcome he envisaged. Now here’s Joe Root getting it very not-right. This
Continue readingIndia have already beaten England in the T20s – could they beat them in all three formats?
3 minute readAbout a month ago we had this big article planned about how India could easily end up winning the Test series against England. Then… well, who knows what happened? It could have been anything. None of us will ever know. All we can say for certain is that the article
Continue readingImagine being bowled out in less than 18.4 overs in your first innings
2 minute readBangladesh were bowled out in 18.4 overs yesterday. That’s pretty bad, but apparently it wasn’t actually the shortest first innings in Test history. Imagine how bad at cricket you’d have to be to be bowled out inside 18.4 overs. Imagine how embarrassing that must have been. Hopefully, whoever it was,
Continue readingA(nother) call for more downtime
< 1 minute readFor players mostly, but also for fans. Our latest Wisden piece delves into how Jonathan Trott went from his normal run-gathering self in early 2013 to down and out by the end of the year. It also takes a quick look at how his Warwickshire team-mate ended up worn down
Continue reading“Our bowling is an area of concern”
< 1 minute readSo said South Africa captain Dane van Niekerk after her team had conceded a world record 216-1 in a T20 against New Zealand and then a few hours later conceded 250-3 against England. “An area of concern” is a great way of putting it. “An absolute liability” is just that
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