< 1 minute readDoes 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
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Something about the third Test
< 1 minute readIt’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 readRegardless 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 readPeople 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 readA 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
Continue readingMonty Panesar is playing and the world is a slightly better place
< 1 minute readWe could have gone with “Monty Panesar’s back“, but we’ve actually done that joke about him twice before. You have to draw the line somewhere. We fully expect you all to now tell us that we’ve drawn that line incorrectly. But let’s not bicker about whether a joke should be
Continue readingWhat happens between Test matches?
2 minute readIf good things come to those who wait then what do we get when we’re not allowed to wait? (Readers in the UK might recognise the music in that video from something else.) This England tour of India started well, with three warm-up matches, but now we’re back in the
Continue readingWill England improve in the second Test?
1 minute readThese days, there’s a lot of rubbish spoken about ‘doing your best’ and ‘aiming high’. How does anyone hope to improve with a mentality like that? You should always set the bar as low as possible and put in only a token amount of effort. That way you’ve got plenty
Continue readingThe aggregation of marginal losses
< 1 minute readFollowing on, with plenty of time left in the game, it was a day for slow twitch muscle fibres. England needed batsmen to show endurance and so it was perhaps unsurprising that the cyclist (Matt Prior) and the player they say is England’s fittest (Alastair Cook) were the ones to
Continue readingBell and Pietersen bat for no-one
< 1 minute readSometimes you bat for your team-mates. Let’s imagine there’s only one threatening bowler in the opposition attack. If you can put some mileage into his legs, you make it easier for the batsmen who follow you. To some extent, it doesn’t really matter how many runs you score. You are
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