< 1 minute readWe’ll be honest. We didn’t see a single ball of this match. We were drinking Belgian beers and playing Goldeneye when it began and we were getting over that experience when it ended. On balance, we made the right choice. Seven one-day internationals between Australia and England a couple of
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England are so bad we just threw up
< 1 minute readWe’re not sure we’ve ever seen an England side as bad as this. The top order keep throwing their wickets away. The bowling lacks pace and guile. There’s no plan. No cohesion. Midway through England’s innings we actually threw up due to acute dissatisfaction. We now feel completely irritated. COMPLETELY
Continue readingPaul Collingwood – an England professional
3 minute readThe days of Gentlemen and Players are long gone, but Paul Collingwood would have been the latter – a man who never lost sight of the fact that it was all about scoring runs; taking wickets and catches; and occasionally missing the ball often enough that your team salvaged a
Continue readingShane Watson v England
< 1 minute readAustralia might have had a better chance in the first Twenty20 international if 10 of them hadn’t been shit. The 11th player, Shane Watson, has suddenly found a world where hitting fifties and bowling straight medium-pace is quite handy. If he’d have found a competent team mate, Australia would have
Continue readingEngland’s Test selectors got everything right
2 minute readIt’s not cool to say that. But we’re not cool. We once did a live Twitter review of a cricket computer game while drinking real ale. On the face of it, picking a Test side is simply a matter of finding your 11 best players and then saying their names
Continue readingA quick pause from the gloating
< 1 minute readThe site won’t be much fun for Aussies for almost the whole of next week, but we thought we’d break up the gloating with a couple of other pieces. Remember when we got a bit carried away when Andrew Flintoff retired and wrote not one, but two retirement pieces about
Continue readingWhen the England cricket team became ruthless
< 1 minute readWe’ve always asked that England become more ruthless. Now it seems to be happening and by the jackal head of Anubis it’s a good feeling. England have been good before, but in continually passing 500 and repeatedly recording innings victories over the course of the 2010-11 Ashes, they’ve added something
Continue readingYou’ll miss Paul Collingwood more than you think
< 1 minute readWe’ll do a proper Paul Collingwood retirement post in a few days. For now, the cricket comes first. Which is as it should be. Anyone feeling sad that he’s fallen into retirement after diminishing returns with the bat would do well to remember the kind of man he is. He
Continue readingIan Bell, James Anderson and doing a bit better when things aren’t in your favour
2 minute readIt’s always tempting to judge players on their best days, but with anything long-term – a cricket career, a relationship, an overnight stint watching the Ashes on TV – a better form of evaluation is to look at what happens when things aren’t in your favour. You learn a lot
Continue readingCake having and eating
< 1 minute readMost of us find that part of the joy of cricket is that there’s always something to talk about. When a match is in the balance, you can pick it apart for hours trying to work out which team’s more likely to win. In the past, we’ve also found it
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