2 minute read Mop-up of the day is a thing we do when we can’t really be bothered writing more than a sentence or two about a bunch of different things. Sometimes we end up writing extra sentences though because it looks weird if the opening sentence, in bold, is immediately followed by
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2 minute read As in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. So what does this mean? It’s almost two years since he last played for England. Where does he fit in these days? Yesterday, Jofra Archer made his return for Mumbai Indians Cape Town – almost literally a franchise within a
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6 minute read Our annual Lord Megachief of Gold award is the highest honour in cricket. The title is recognition of performance over the previous calendar year. Here are all the winners. Up until now we’ve always recognised players for their batting or their bowling or both. This year, something else has swayed
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4 minute read Last week Rehan Ahmed became England’s youngest debutant and soon after the youngest men’s Test debutant to take a five-wicket haul. But just how young is he really? Age is famously just a number (in this case 18), so maybe we can get a clearer perspective on his youth by
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3 minute read We don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway. We have a track record of getting overexcited about 18-year-old leg-spinning all-rounders. It worked out last time though, so the way we see it, it makes perfect sense to get completely overexcited again.
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3 minute read While England’s hell-for-leather batting approach of the first Test was again seen in the second, it was often tempered by either (a) conditions or (b) getting out. What we can conclude from this is that pitches matter. So what can we expect from the National Stadium in Karachi for the
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5 minute read The second Test was “a differently played game” according to Ben Stokes. It still resulted in England winning in Pakistan though, which is not a thing that had happened too often until this month. The match has left us with quite a few half-baked thoughts rolling around our largely empty
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2 minute read We don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway. How very Pakistan to fight fire with magic. How very Pakistan to have a random pile of spare magic just lying around waiting to be used in a Test match – this time
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3 minute read England’s win over Pakistan in Rawalpindi has given rise to several highly annoying articles asking whether Ben Stokes’ team are changing Test cricket forever. Maybe a bit, maybe not so much. Does it matter? Can’t it just be a great Test victory on a fairly awful pitch? Because that really
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3 minute read It was a win that England were racing to catch from the outset. The Test began with Zak Crawley hitting three fours off Naseem Shah’s opening over and it ended with the light meters out. Ben Stokes’ men never really slowed in between. Even if England hadn’t won, you’d have
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