2 minute readAsk a stupid question, get a stupid answer. After that, build a whole stupid thing around the stupid answer and then pin all of your hopes for the survival of your sport on how well the stupid thing fares. The ECB are going to launch this 100-ball competition and they
Continue readingCategory: England
Is it right that Jos Buttler won a Test spot without playing first-class cricket?
2 minute readLet’s take a look at how Test teams are picked and whether runs in other formats are relevant. We’ll begin with a quick bit of background. A quick bit of background Doing well at one-day cricket for England used to be a common way of getting into the Test team.
Continue readingAre you in The Wisden Cricket Weekly Gang?
2 minute readDo you mind if we tell you a barely relevant story? If you do mind, you’re probably reading the wrong website. We’re very confident that the pure hilariousness of this tale cannot possibly be conveyed without first-person experience of the person involved, but we’re going to tell you anyway because
Continue readingMark Wood’s IPL experience with Chennai Super Kings has helped him make his choices – but where will he go next?
2 minute readYou may remember that earlier in the year, we wrote about the weighted, weighty decisions faced by Mark Wood this season. Wood’s long format career has been in the balance of late. An IPL contract seemed likely to keep him out of all early season first-class cricket and a consequence
Continue reading“The other 10 balls will add a fresh tactical dimension”
2 minute read Of all the very many sizeable questions that arise from the ECB’s plan to introduce a new 100-ball format to cricket, the biggest one is surely this: how did they decide who had to have the “fresh tactical dimension” quote attributed to them? To quickly bring you up to
Continue readingIs Ed Smith in or out of a job?
2 minute readThe photo on the homepage of Ed Smith’s website is worth a look. It is from an actual photo shoot. We haven’t exactly done extensive research on this, but booking a photo shoot to get some pictures of yourself would seem to us to be quite an unusual thing for
Continue readingEngland need a short-pitched specialist like Neil Wagner
< 1 minute readAsking someone to bowl with the old ball is not the same as picking someone who has built their career around bowling with the old ball. Asking someone to bowl short is not the same as picking someone who has built their entire career around bowling short. Being tall does
Continue readingThe fourth innings ‘ball hundred’
< 1 minute readRuns are not always the objective for a batsman. If a team finds itself behind in a game such that a win becomes almost impossible, the objective generally becomes survival. Similarly, if you’re one-nil up in a series and it’s the final Test, a draw means a series win. In
Continue readingIs Stuart Broad back and is that necessarily a wholly good thing for England?
4 minute readThe future’s here. The future’s even more of Stuart Broad bowling with the new ball. You might think that sounds suspiciously like the past and you’d be right. Sometimes things don’t change all that much. Actually one thing’s changed. Whether it’s enthusiasm, rhythm, a minor technical tweak or a combination
Continue readingWhen was the worst moment to tune in on the day England were 58 all out?
2 minute readEngland were 58 all out today and New Zealand didn’t even have to stoop to a bowling change. Being as play largely took place during the UK night, England supporters will have first seen the score at all sorts of different points, depending on bedtime, alarm time and bladder size.
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