2 minute readMost of you will answer ‘yes’. Finn’s performance in the third Test is fresh in the mind and it’s hard to argue that his best isn’t a notch above Bresnan’s best, but that’s not the whole story. We’re pretty good at squash, but that doesn’t mean we don’t accidentally twat
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Cricket’s schadenfreude production line
2 minute readCongratulations, South Africa. Prepare for people to delight in your fall. In recent years, the Test rankings have been a kind of schadenfreude production line. One nation gets to the top and promptly celebrates and then everyone else celebrates even more heartily when the team in question drops down again.
Continue readingJonny Bairstow isn’t bothered
< 1 minute readYou wonder whether it’s worth England batting Jonny Bairstow at the top of the order. It’s not that he’s particularly suited to the role, but if the opposition remain hell-bent on bouncing the shit out of him, it might soften the ball a bit for all the batsmen who follow.
Continue readingStuart Broad fails to trouble the speed gun
1 minute readYesterday, we said that England needed to take wickets quickly. They did. How did they achieve this? Well, actually, we’re not sure they had all that much to do with it. It was almost like South Africa had exhausted their collective mental reserves; like much of the side’s patience and
Continue readingEngland need an impatient bowling philosophy
< 1 minute readNot sure you’re aware of this, but spectacular, freewheeling batting performances don’t win Test matches. They provide a team with runs to work with without too much time being lost, but it’s only once the opposition are padded up that the real work starts. You don’t win a Test by
Continue readingEngland’s next batsmen
2 minute readThe most interesting thing about all this tiresome bollocks with Kevin Pietersen is that we get a little peek into England’s future. James Taylor made a solid and unspectacular start to his Test career in the first Test and now Jonny Bairstow will return to play a few eye-level cricket
Continue readingThe fake Kevin Pietersen account was being written by one of Stuart Broad’s mates
< 1 minute readGraeme Swann knows him too, apparently. If you want to know our feelings, we’re sticking with what we wrote the other day. Everyone talking about this seems to be taking sides now. It’s become one of those ‘us v them’ situations, which is good, because that sort of thing is
Continue readingUnderstanding the ICC’s ODI rankings
2 minute readEngland 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
Continue readingKevin Pietersen versus the England players
3 minute readThis 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
Continue readingKevin Pietersen versus the ECB
< 1 minute readWe 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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