2 minute read On Sky, Nick Knight asked why England had been scoring at two runs an over, like it was some sort of policy. The truth is that even Kevin Pietersen couldn’t score quicker. Early wickets probably brought added caution, but the pitch seems to have dictated that there will be some
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The case for Onions
2 minute read Delicious and versatile. Oh wait, upper-case ‘O’. Let’s start again. Graham Onions is the England bowler everyone rates, but not enough that he’s ever the person they think should play. His qualities are low-octane and harder to see. There’s always a taller bowler or a faster bowler who’s more eye-catching.
Continue readingEngland’s Eden Gardens Test win, four-man bowling attacks and Zaheer Khan
2 minute read We’ll be honest, we’re struggling to know what to say about England’s win at Eden Gardens. Comparing our preview to the scorecard kind of puts things in perspective. The current fashion seems to be to denigrate India, but that’s only half the story. The other half most revolves around Alastair
Continue readingIndia have a bad day at the crease
2 minute read R Ashwin is a good batsman, but no-one considers him to be one of the best six batsman in India. In that case, why is it that he seems to be thriving with the bat while the specialists are batting like a big bag of grundle? There’s no simple answer.
Continue readingIndia have a bad day in the field
< 1 minute read India have an amazing ability to take a bad day in the field and make it look worse. It’s a flat pitch and they managed to take five wickets (although none for the man with ‘the best wrist in cricket’) but yet it seemed far more horrendous than that. Mostly
Continue readingGuess we’ll write about Alastair Cook
< 1 minute read Does Alastair Cook know that captains are allowed off the field? If he doesn’t, no-one tip him off, because it’s going quite well. In five Tests leading England, he’s now scored five hundreds. He even hit some nice shots today, which isn’t really the point. An Alastair Cook innings shouldn’t
Continue readingSomething about the third Test
< 1 minute read It’s not that we’ve got nothing to say ahead of the Kolkata Test, it’s that we’ve already previewed the match. You want more than that? You want something timely? Okay, how about whether Steven Finn should play? We’d say that if he’s fit, he should play, because Stuart Broad seems
Continue readingHow do you feel about England’s win over India in the second Test?
< 1 minute read Regardless of the outcome of the rest of the series, we’re inclined to say this was one of the most impressive England wins we’ve seen. It’s not just that it’s an England win in India – which is as rare as a sighting of a wendigo – it’s that they
Continue readingMonty Panesar’s dimension
< 1 minute read People can overcomplicate things sometimes. Pyramid tea bags? You can make a perfect cup of tea with an ordinary bag, so this is not a worthwhile development. Okay, maybe that’s not precisely the right analogy here. We do accept that there is something in the Monty Panesar has played one
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The wicket to run exchange rate
< 1 minute read A run doesn’t have a set value. Instead, its value changes from one match to the next and arguably even fluctuates over the course of a single match. This is why it’s important not to pay too much attention to averages. In Tests, the value of a run is defined
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