2 minute readWe always say that the second division of the County Championship doesn’t count. Hopefully it’s obvious that this is rhetoric. Our exaggerated stance is not borne of a belief that the cricket played is worthless, but of a perception that some still haven’t quite accepted that it is in any
Continue readingCategory: County cricket
Last week’s County Championship cricket was even less consequential than the week before
< 1 minute readAt least last time around someone won. Halcyon days. Out of the three draws in the latest round of matches, the points scored ranged from Middlesex’s 10 to Warwickshire and Surrey’s 13. Surrey v Somerset was the only fixture to reach the fourth innings and Durham v Middlesex didn’t even
Continue readingTop ten single figure scores in the County Championship in 2016
< 1 minute readThe modern world is in thrall to the list. Everything has to be ranked. Everyone has this urge to say who’s better than whom, which innings was better than which, and which bowling performance was the greatest of all time. They even abbreviate ‘greatest of all time’ to GOAT these
Continue readingHow often do you get ‘snow stopped play’?
< 1 minute readWe’ve attended a County Championship match on a double trousers day before. Sitting still, steadily losing heat throughout the day, you don’t quite realise how cold you are until your bone marrow turns solid. You don’t know what that feels like? You’ll know it when it happens. Ravi Rampaul didn’t
Continue readingRob Key and the art of being selective in one’s giving of shits
< 1 minute readIf you’re wondering where we’ve been, we’ve unfortunately been too busy writing things to write things. One of these written distractions was about Rob Key. Cricinfo gave it the coveted midnight on a Friday slot at the top of the homepage, clearly of a mind that this would be perfect
Continue readingA surprisingly small proportion of this last week’s County Championship cricket actually amounted to much
< 1 minute readThe batsmen (and bowlers) of Middlesex, Warwickshire, Yorkshire and Hampshire busied themselves scoring hundreds and double hundreds. Nothing of any real consequence came about as a result of this behaviour. The players representing Lancashire and Nottinghamshire stuck to double figures and that game therefore reached some sort of meaningful conclusion.
Continue readingIs Gary Ballance back?
2 minute readIt’s a reference to a headline pun that’s overused on this website but which isn’t itself a pun. Jokes don’t come much weaker than that. Except for all our other ones. Is Gary Ballance back? Sport is brutally cold and England won’t go into the first Test of the summer
Continue readingLet’s keep tabs on Jake Ball
< 1 minute readThere was a phenomenon in Premier Manager 2 where all of your team’s young players would improve by about 20 per cent over the summer break. If you stacked your side with teenagers and managed to avoid the sack, you were all but guaranteed promotion the following season. Has something
Continue readingCricinfo still lumps first and second division matches in together in their live scores box
< 1 minute readDrives us mental. Why do people most often visit Cricinfo? To check the scores. Yet if we look at the current live matches, there is no way of telling which match is in which division, unless you happen to have memorised the teams in each league. At the time of
Continue readingMonty Panesar’s back!
< 1 minute readAs in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got anklosing spondylitis or anything. Like many people, we have a soft spot for Monty Panesar. Firstly, he lent his name to our assistant. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, he was for a time exceptionally good at bowling spin for England. Now he’s back. Back
Continue reading