5 minute readJason Roy isn’t at his best. He’s not even in a place where he can try and bat at his best. How can a white ball specialist like him get back into good batting form these days? Let’s start in the obvious place with a story about a speed skater.
Continue readingCategory: England
Lesson from the Commonwealth Games: the team that wins absolutely every single game is a good team
2 minute readWe’ve been here before. Australia are still the team that wins everything – this time gold at the Commonwealth Games. As far as on-the-nose victory anthems go, We Are The Champions by Queen still rules the roost. Comedy writer/actor Stephen Merchant used to talk about trying to write a rival
Continue reading12 games and four series in 25 days – a July England white ball recap
3 minute readDid England’s white ball schedule get ahead of you this month? It got away from us. It got away from England too. First, the bare bones of it: England lost both the T20 and ODI series 2-1 to India, drew the ODI series against South Africa 1-1 and then lost
Continue readingBen Stokes is managing
2 minute read‘Managing’ means two things. It means taking decisions and directing matters so that everything hopefully progresses more smoothly. It also means bumbling through in the face of various problems in the vague hope you’ll just get through it all somehow. Tired of the second approach, Ben Stokes has switched to
Continue readingEoin Morgan – the captain who ignored everyone and gave England ambition
8 minute readEngland were a one-day team who didn’t know how to top 300 – didn’t even dare to try. Eoin Morgan turned them into the best flat track batting side there’s ever been. It’s worth taking stock of the scale of that transformation and the conviction of the captain who achieved
Continue readingBen Stokes’ England are so far beating their greatest enemy – second-guessing themselves
4 minute read“It’s a game of failure, batting,” said Joe Root five minutes after this Test finished. The statement was on the one hand very sage and on the other just plain wrong. Four times in a row England have chased a lot of runs to win. This would be remarkable even
Continue readingRanked: All eight deliveries in Stuart Broad’s world record 35-run over to Jasprit Bumrah
4 minute readSome people said Stuart Broad’s 35-run over to Jasprit Bumrah reminded them of when Yuvraj Singh hit him for 36 in the T20 World Cup that time. But it was not like that. It was not like that at all. This was much, much better and funnier. There’s actually a
Continue readingA piss-easy way to carve out extra time for each women’s Test match
2 minute readEngland’s men’s team are halfway through playing two Tests in two weeks against different opponents. England’s women’s team have a full year to wait until their next Test against anyone. The comparisons are easy, jarring and awful. The New Zealand/India fortnight is only the middle back-to-back for the men after
Continue readingOh sure, Daryl Mitchell and Jonny Bairstow are batting really well right now, but…
2 minute readJonny Bairstow has worked out that he can score twice as many runs simply by doubling his strike-rate. Daryl Mitchell has realised he’ll probably keep hold of his Test place if he scores a hundred in every single match. But what do these developments actually prove? Because yeah, sure, Jonny
Continue readingStokes and McCullum have the Jack Leach they created
2 minute readIf you’re attentive and possessed of a decent memory, you’ll clock that the headline above is a very obvious reference to our December article, Root and Silverwood have the Jack Leach they created. There’s a contrast in man management here and if you read that article again, you’ll easily see
Continue reading