< 1 minute read Who was the winner here? Not England. Not West Indies. Not cricket. Not the crowd. After many calculations, we’ve deduced that the winner was, rather unexpectedly, Michael Flatley. Nobody wants that. This match was like watching a dot matrix printer run off sheets and sheets of binary code. Something was
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Alastair Cook, please stop hooking
< 1 minute read Someone should look into irregular betting patterns surrounding ‘Alastair Cook caught hooking’ because he seems to be hell-bent on getting out this way. In the last Test, he leant back and poked one into the air in an enticingly gentle parabola. In yesterday’s innings, he popped one up towards Sulieman
Continue readingAndrew Strauss – a fitting end to a top innings
< 1 minute read The pitch may have been as flat as a well-ironed pancake, but Andrew Strauss has continued his spectacular winter form. This was his fourth hundred for eight times out. He attacked as well. Strauss scored 142 of England’s 301-3 and he was out almost immediately after tea. He batted so
Continue readingGiles Clarke – this is what we think of you
< 1 minute read “It’s true that I have received a lot of criticism in the media, some of it hysterical and utterly irrational, some of it immensely rude. I discard those people.” Everybody ready? Let’s get discarded. Giles Clarke is the public face of the ECB. He is there to be ridiculed. He
Continue readingRavi Bopara should be allowed to have a bat
< 1 minute read Ravi Bopara or Ian Bell? We’re saying Ravi Bopara. If you’re going to drop someone, you have to do it properly. Ian Bell has been dropped like a hot pan full of cymbals that’s been grasped with bare hands. Bopara might be crap at tiling and even worse at promoting
Continue readingWest Indies cricket not so flimsy
< 1 minute read Some people think that the West Indies are a team who buckle, like a belt. People think they fold, like a clean pair of trousers. But this West Indies team stood defiantly like a man who can’t find his belt or his trousers and doesn’t care about that fact. He
Continue readingGraeme Swann takes five Test wickets
< 1 minute read It’s a big deal. Andrew Flintoff pretty much never manages it and he’s supposed to be the best bowler since the Bowlinator 9000 perfected the 95mph googly. We don’t know for sure whether anyone ever followed our instructions as to how to help Graeme Swann into the England side from
Continue readingPaul Collingwood
< 1 minute read If you’re Paul Collingwood, you have to do a little bit more than other batsmen. He’s hit three hundreds in his last nine Test innings, each in a different country and each against a different attack. People will accept that he can stay in the side for another couple of
Continue readingEngland batsmen rack up team scores each
< 1 minute read Alastair Cook, 52. What a Herculean effort. Ordinarily, you’d need 11 men to get anywhere near a score like that. Owais Shah, 57. It’s a number beyond counting. We don’t know how many noughts 57 has, but it must be nearly a million. It’s the biggest number we’ve ever heard
Continue readingThe cost of an abandoned Test
< 1 minute read Real, world-class incompetence in the organisation of an international cricket match is pretty funny to a degree. It makes you feel better about those occasions when you can’t quite manage to write a list AND take it to the supermarket with you. However, it being a bit funny is a
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