< 1 minute readThis is a good pitch. It has led to good cricket. A one-day pitch can be flat, because the game progresses with each over, but Test matches progress with the fall of wickets. When a match is progressing, other events other than wickets also matter more. It is how Test
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England beat the eight men of India
< 1 minute readHyperbole, but not entirely unwarranted. Sometimes a pint of dour dissatisfaction and a willingness to take the negatives doesn’t do you any harm. India had the misfortune of having three players handicapped by a perennially twangy hammy, a pock-marked elbow and the wild shits. This wasn’t their fault. They also
Continue readingEngland need to take their chance
< 1 minute readWe well remember the first Test of India’s last tour, which is weird, because we were in Canada for all but the final day. But it’s that final day that’s important here. Nine wickets down, MS Dhoni blocked the shit out of it and for England, that was the difference
Continue readingGet The Wall on the board
< 1 minute readIt’s not the usual way round, but it makes a lot of sense if you follow cricket. Rahul Dravid should be on the Lord’s honours board. And now he is. After Dravid made his hundred, there were a lot of people implying that he has played in the shadow of
Continue readingZaheer Khan Operation Greggs latest
< 1 minute readBert has just left a comment drawing attention to Zaheer Khan’s performance this morning, pondering whether Operation Greggs has been put into practice. Operation Greggs involves plying Zaheer with meat and tatty pies until he’s bowling at Praveen Kumar pace. Bert is right to raise this possibility, but it is
Continue readingTendulkar has been better than Bradman
2 minute readOver at The Cricketer, John Emburey has made the point that Sachin Tendulkar has been tested in ways that Bradman wasn’t. It’s a fair point. Different eras In Ed Smith’s damn fine book, What Sport Tells Us About Life, there’s a whole chapter dedicated to Bradman’s average. Someone somewhere did
Continue readingFeeble headline of the week
< 1 minute read‘Sachin Tendulkar is arguably the best batsman of my generation’ The Guardian have set the bar low. Can anyone stoop lower?
Continue readingZaheer Khan and James Anderson
2 minute readWe’re all pretty lucky, you know. For the next few weeks, we’re going to get Zaheer Khan one innings and then James Anderson the next. It’s like our metabolism has suddenly allowed us a curry-pizza-curry-pizza diet. No muesli. What follows isn’t really meant to be a comparison. It’s more about
Continue readingWhat is Sachin Tendulkar really thinking?
< 1 minute readThe Cricinfo headline reads: “Tendulkar not thinking of 100th ton”. Now we haven’t got time to actually click the link and read the article, but we have got time to sit here with a beer or two, spending hours thinking about that headline. How can Cricinfo know that Tendulkar isn’t
Continue readingHarbhajan Singh is part way there
2 minute readCricinfo have done a ‘how will history judge him?’ kind of article in the wake of Harbhajan Singh’s 400th Test wicket. Seems weird. He’s still playing, right? Harbhajan is now 31. He’s hardly shopping for his last pair of slippers. Graeme Swann had played about a dozen Tests by that
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