< 1 minute readThe first Test match for Ireland’s men’s team will be against Pakistan in May 2018. It should have been England. That much is obvious. If two teams can meet without resorting to air travel, they’re close enough that there should be some sort of relationship between them. The relationship between
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It’s a fine line between love and hate for David Warner
< 1 minute readYou’ll of course remember when David Warner took a swing at Joe Root after becoming inexplicably incensed by the Yorkshireman’s inappropriate use of a wig. Halcyon days. There was at least something comical about this particular confrontation; a certain Scrappy Doo quality borne of Warner’s diminutive stature and the sheer ludicrousness
Continue readingThe campaign to get Paul Collingwood into England’s Ashes squad
< 1 minute readWhat else does nostalgia prove, if not that everything was better in the past? Let’s do the who, the what and the why. Who? Paul Collingwood. Paul is 41 and hasn’t played Test cricket for England since 2011, so the first thing to say in favour of his selection is
Continue readingDid you know that it’s the Magellan Ashes this time around?
2 minute readSponsorship is a wonderful thing. It keeps fun stuff profitable and it allows sports players to sound institutionalised and cut off from reality. Midway through the British summer, we saw Alastair Cook being interviewed on breakfast TV. Consummate professional that he is, Cook never once said “Test” when he could
Continue readingI Don’t Like Cricket, I Hate It – the upcoming Ashes tour edition
3 minute readA semi-regular feature in which we ask a fella going by the name of Prince Prefab about cricket – even though he hates cricket. We are in bold. Prince Prefab is not. It strikes us that a looming Ashes tour is one of the few times when the sport might
Continue readingEngland to win the Ashes via airy off-side drives
2 minute readIs that a dripping tap way off in the distance? No, it’s actually James Vince gently knocking on the door to politely request selection, if that wouldn’t be too much trouble. Quite how the selectors heard him is beyond us. Vince wasn’t thought to be good enough at the start
Continue readingBen Stokes makes a night in the cells happen
2 minute readThe facts are these. Splice and dice them as you see fit. The ECB say that 26-year-old Ben Stokes was arrested in the early hours of Monday morning following “an incident” in Bristol Police say a 26-year-old man was arrested that night on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm Another
Continue readingMoeen Ali does some clean hitting
2 minute readMo mowed it. It was a day of increasing numbness to sixes and Batting Ali had the good sense to get in early when they still seemed important and the match was still in the balance. Others may have hit the ball further, but no-one lashed it quite so reliably
Continue readingStuart Broad’s batting has peaked
2 minute readStuart Broad’s batting just gets better and better. Maybe not by the traditional metric of batting average, but there are far more sensible ways of assessing a cricketer’s worth. Once upon a time, Broad was a good batsman: high left elbow, great timing and solid defence. Then he top-edged a
Continue reading“You don’t see Alastair Cook drop too many”
2 minute readSo said Michael Vaughan after Cook had shelled an easy one early on. Where has he been looking? We’ve always felt like he drops a fair few – although maybe not by Vaughan’s own almost criminally low catching standards. We wouldn’t go so far as to say that Cook’s a
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