< 1 minute read ‘Spot the statistics nerd’ isn’t a game you should play in a cricket ground when it’s anything other than completely empty. It’s no challenge at all. A game of ‘spot the fancy dress drunk’ was abandoned later that same day.
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How to get run out
< 1 minute read We nearly laid into England after their limp defeat in the first one-day international, but thought: ‘No. Wait. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt for the minute.’ What a waste of an update. England have only gone and played just as pathetically in the second one-dayer. Feeble total
Continue readingProfessional cricketers fail to act their age
< 1 minute read A top score of 31 and a third of the team getting run out? A fielding side that dives around after everything like it’s tanked-up on E numbers? It’s under-11s cricket, isn’t it? There was a disappointingly small number of wides and the match wasn’t decided by the one kid
Continue readingMarston’s Pedigree Six
< 1 minute read Marston’s have brought out a new beer because they sponsor England. It’s called Pedigree Six on account of it being 6%. Mmm, boozy. We’re going to drink four ‘Sixes’ in honour of Dimitri Mascarenhas’s four sixes the other day (and with perhaps a nod towards our own alcohol dependence as
Continue readingTwenty20 takes 22 players
< 1 minute read We really like Twenty20, but it can be difficult to report on. It’s more difficult to identify that one, stand-out performance from a player. Twenty20’s more of a team game than you might think. With only 20 overs, it makes sense that one big innings from a batsman decides the
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Dimitri Mascarenhas is handy down the order
< 1 minute read England don’t often find batsman who are pretty good. They have good and great batsmen at the top of the order and they have rubbish and not awful batsmen down the order, but there always seems to be a number eight-shaped hole in the batting card. In one-day cricket at
Continue readingEngland v New Zealand – masterful cricket scheduling
< 1 minute read Great news for fans of England v New Zealand matches – today’s Twenty20 match was the first of 19 consecutive international fixtures between the two sides. Surely what everyone’s hoping is that one team gets on top early on and shows itself to be vastly superior to the other team.
Continue readingAlastair Cook in one-day cricket
2 minute read Alastair Cook hit a hundred in England’s latest warm-up. The bowlers he had to face might not have been the world’s finest, but he hit 138 not out off 140 balls and every time he does that he’ll be getting a little bit more comfortable with one-day cricket. There are
Continue readingEngland Lions: five for Panesar, Flintoff to appear at boundary edge
< 1 minute read Five wickets for Monty Panesar – there’s a sentence that’s been conspicuous by its absence of late. He only did it for England Lions though, who we’re going to start calling England Second XI, because that’s much more accurate. If you’re going to name one of your national teams after
Continue readingEngland’s number six for New Zealand
2 minute read We want Ian Bell back at number six in the batting order. He’s shown promise and he hasn’t disgraced himself at three, but he’s so good at six and that’s an important spot too. England forget this sometimes. An England batting line-up with Bell at six looks a lot more
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