< 1 minute readMitchell Starc’s been sent for an operation. Apparently, he’s been suffering with bone spurs for months. It’s very hard to keep track of injuries to Australian bowlers, but we think that he joins Pat Cummins and Jackson Bird on the sidelines. We presume Ryan Harris is injured as well, although
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Phil Hughes Watch
< 1 minute readA quick update on how Phil Hughes is doing against India’s spinners. He really kicked on today, scoring two whole runs. This means that Hughes has now been dismissed five times in his last 70 balls against spin, scoring two runs in that time. That’s 0.4 runs per dismissal at
Continue readingAustralia’s tour picks up
< 1 minute readA great result for Australia today with the first day’s play being a complete washout. It didn’t stop them making the one decision needed for them to commit to a playing eleven though. “We went with what we perceive to be our two specialist spinners.” Does that mean that they
Continue readingAre Australia’s cricketers basically just children?
< 1 minute readThis is the impression we’re getting. ‘Come up with three ways in which we can improve’ People keep using the word ‘homework’ and it’s because of the way the task was given to the players. It’s the kind of school assignment where the level of difficulty has been carefully gauged
Continue readingOur three-point plan for improving Australia’s Test performances in India
< 1 minute readIf Shane, Mitch, James and Usman won’t bother, we will. 1. Bat Michael Clarke down the order We suggest at number six or even at number seven. As well as protecting the captain from India’s dangerous new ball bowlers, this will also help conserve his strength. He needs all the
Continue readingAustralian cricket somehow manages to become even more embarrassing
< 1 minute readAnd you thought something couldn’t be simultaneously depressing and hilarious. Australia have dropped four cricketers for failing to deliver a presentation. The modern world just got worse, but so did Australian cricket. The good news for Australia is that Shane Watson didn’t injure himself attempting to operate a computer keyboard.
Continue readingTest cricket is a bad experiment
2 minute readWe don’t mean that in the sense that we’ve tried Test cricket and it should now be abandoned. What we’re saying is that Test cricket is essentially a shoddily-designed framework for testing all sorts of hypotheses and the lack of clarity is what makes it so compelling. Take India v
Continue readingPhillip Hughes against India’s spinners
< 1 minute readAround 95 per cent of cricket statistics are 85 per cent meaningless, but here’s a nice one: In his last 39 deliveries against spin, Phillip Hughes has scored zero runs and been dismissed four times. Earlier in the year, Hughes was overlooked for the Tests against South Africa because the
Continue readingAustralia add two spinners and subtract one
< 1 minute readYesterday, we wrote about Australia’s firmly held belief that there’s a better spinner out there despite there being absolutely no evidence whatsoever that that’s the case. Today they dropped Nathan Lyon. But this isn’t exactly the cut-and-dried lack of faith in Lyon that you might think. Instead, it seems that
Continue readingFawad Ahmed and Australian spin belief
2 minute readIf you don’t know who Fawad Ahmed is, he’s a Pakistani refugee who’s looking to get an Australian passport and he also bowls a bit of spin in his spare time. Now, before we continue, let us be clear that Fawad Ahmed might well be an excellent bowler. He might
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