< 1 minute readMight as well call for at least one of the captains to be sacked. His batsmen have crumbled against bowling they should be comfortable against, his senior players aren’t ‘standing up’, he’s insisting on fielding a part-time spinner instead of a specialist and he hasn’t made a hundred in his
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Moeen Ali won’t tie up an end
2 minute readThere are two types of spin bowlers: The first kind is the attacking kind. They bat at number 11, but with the ball in their hand, they can take wickets. Early in their career, they can be a bit hit and miss, going for a few boundaries, but you try
Continue readingWe just want to watch Jos Buttler bat
< 1 minute readWhatever his keeping’s like and no matter whether or not he’s ‘ready’ for Test cricket, we’re very pleased that Jos Buttler is now in England’s Test team. We like skittishness in a number seven batsman. It is always worth watching Buttler at the crease and when he bats with Ian
Continue readingFour bowlers, five runs and one Gary Ballance
2 minute readAfter winning the previous Test with four-and-a-bit bowlers, India could have gone either way for this one. Unsurprisingly, they went with four bowlers, not five. Sometimes you can determine a lot from these fifty-fifty calls and MS Dhoni does seem to be a bit of a ‘pick the extra batsman’
Continue readingTest match start days and the concept of ‘appointment to view’
< 1 minute readThis year they moved the Twenty20 Cup to Friday nights to create an ‘appointment to view’. The premise is if people know when matches are being played, there’s a better chance they’ll watch. This year also sees a five-Test series taking place between England and India which boasts four different
Continue readingIshant Sharma with the short ball at Lord’s
2 minute readIt’s an unlikely Cluedo solution, but it happened. We saw it with our own eyes. Joe Root was the third caught attacking the short ball after lunch and he did a cracking Charlie Brown slope upon being dismissed. It was really, really first class. We were in awe. We don’t
Continue readingAnd again England concede runs to the lower order
< 1 minute readIt’s okay to start headlines with ‘and’ when you’re emphasising the repetitive nature of something. Ravindra Jadeja isn’t exactly the tail, of course. Even if you play half your domestic matches on the world’s flattest pitch, scoring three triple hundreds shifts you out of the tail-end category never to return.
Continue readingAlastair Cook failed to ration his runs
< 1 minute readVirat Kohli’s due a score, isn’t he? And how many runs has Alastair Cook got in his bag, just waiting to be plucked out? Or is it more that Cook’s now suffering the inevitable consequences of frittering runs away earlier in his career. There was a complete lack of rationing
Continue readingAjinkya Rahane v Suresh Raina
2 minute readOkay, turns out we do have something else to say. It’s to do with who’s a good batsman. We don’t want this to become a Suresh Raina bashing thing, because we’ve a certain amount of time for him. He does certain things better than almost anyone. The issue is that
Continue readingAjinkya Rahane’s overdue a proper mention
< 1 minute readFor the second time this series, we find ourself looking for an old article of ours about an Indian batsman only to find that we never actually wrote it. As far back as 2012, we were casually referring to Ajinkya Rahane in a matter of fact way, as if you
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