2 minute readDoing your cricket things slightly earlier in the match is all the rage this month. Steve Smith’s become an opening batter. Jack Leach (or Rehan Ahmed or Tom Hartley or Joe Root) has become an opening bowler. England have picked just one quick bowler, Mark Wood, for the first Test
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3 minute readSome pretty big news has broken since England (finally) touched down in India for their five-Test series. It’s not Virat Kohli missing the first two games for personal reasons. It’s not Harry Brook missing (probably, maybe) the whole series, also for personal reasons. It’s to do with Ben Stokes. We
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4 minute readA Test tour of India feels like a bit of a free hit these days. England are supposed to lose… heavily. Captain and coach talk a good game and their ambitions and belief are genuine, but if the tourists emerge with anything less than a 5-0 defeat, those oh-so-familiar clichéd
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5 minute readOur annual Lord Megachief of Gold award is the highest honour in cricket. The title is recognition of performance over the previous calendar year. Here are all the winners. We don’t want to start all downbeat, but sometimes an exercise brings a particular situation into sharper focus. We all know
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< 1 minute readIf you don’t know our approach to covering the Boxing Day Tests, it involves listing what matches are taking place, wishing everyone a happy Festivus and then buggering off. In previous years, you, the readership, have boldly stepped into the breach and highlighted all the interesting cricket in the comments
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3 minute readTo scroll through the list of venues for women’s Tests between England and India is to be struck by two things. (1) They don’t play in India very often. (2) The few India Tests that do take place are held in rather bigger cities than the ones used for the
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3 minute readWhere were you when Ruturaj Gaikwad was run out by Nathan Ellis? You almost certainly have no idea because you almost certainly weren’t paying attention and quite possibly don’t even realise that it happened in an India v Australia match. International cricket teams aren’t guitars: in an ideal world you’d
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4 minute readIf you’d asked anyone, at any point in the last year, how this ever-so-predictable World Cup would climax, they’d have all given exactly the same answer. It was always going to end with Welcome to the Jungle blaring out over the PA as Marnus Labuschagne punched the air with 58
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< 1 minute readToday Mohammed Shami’s insatiable thirst for World Cup wickets spilled over into his fielding when he utterly failed to secure an easy wicket from a delivery bowled by someone else. What happened was: Jasprit Bumrah bowled, Kane Williamson hit it straight to Shami, and Shami for some reason went all
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3 minute readOn Wednesday – near enough six weeks after the World Cup began – India play their first game that they actually have to win. The form guide suggests New Zealand will be swept away, but the form guide hasn’t been measuring must-win games. The truism here is that Indian players
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