Understanding the ICC’s ODI rankings

2 minute read England are now ranked the number one side in one-day internationals (ODIs). Here’s why that doesn’t matter. Lesson one Rankings tell you what’s happened. They don’t tell you who’s best. They tell you who’s been the best and even then only up to a point (see lesson two). If England

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Kevin Pietersen versus the England players

3 minute read This morning, Sam pointed us towards this story. It seems Kevin Pietersen suspects some of his team-mates of running a parody Twitter account in his name. Is this the modern sportsman’s equivalent of “he’s calling me names behind my back”? It seems very, very unlikely that Graeme Swann, Jimmy Anderson

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Kevin Pietersen versus the ECB

< 1 minute read We spent quite a while writing the previous post, but now we’re having to write this one because all anyone will want to talk about is Kevin Pietersen’s post-match interview: “I can’t give any assurances that the next Test won’t be my last. I’d like to carry on but there

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Too few ales at the England bar

< 1 minute read South Africa looked so vulnerable against right-arm fast-medium bowlers during the first Test that England have added a fourth. Our feelings on this are well-known. You should always play a spinner. It’s not just about having a specialist should the pitch offer significant turn later in the match (although that’s

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James Taylor’s height again

< 1 minute read You wait and wait for a drawing of the diminutive James Taylor batting with gangletastic Will Jefferson and then you get two in two days. Angy was responsible for this one: Hope everyone’s starting to get a decent sense of just how small James Taylor is. Sorry if it’s still

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How tall is James Taylor?

< 1 minute read He’s about three-foot-one, three-foot-two maybe. There’s a very striking photo of James Taylor when he was batting with the grossly oversized Will Jefferson once. Sam sent it to us asking us to publish it. We said we couldn’t because of all that copyright stuff that no-one pays attention to when

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