< 1 minute readWe’d say India have as good a claim as anyone to being the best Test cricket team at the moment. Batting Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Mahendra Dhoni. This is not shit. They’re all fantastic batsmen and they’re all different. We mean they’re all
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Three ways in which we’ve been right in the last 24 hours
< 1 minute readThis is quite unusual. We’re not usually right about stuff. Normally, you can ask us questions about things that have happened to us and we’ll get the answers wrong. “Did Dan tell you he was moving to Australia?” “No!” [Long pause] “Don’t think so.” [Another long pause] “Well, maybe…” Dwayne
Continue readingVirender Sehwag is a bastard and here’s why
< 1 minute readVirender Sehwag is a bastard because he plays too many good innings to keep track of and there aren’t enough superlatives to spread among them. Consider this: Sehwag’s last Test innings was 131. That was a failure. His first four Test hundreds were all under 150; all failures. After that,
Continue readingVirender Sehwag is what Test cricket is all about
< 1 minute readVirender Sehwag: 284 not out overnight. This was Test cricket. The Sri Lankan players couldn’t just soak it up for 20 overs before seeing if they could do better. This problem wasn’t going away. But what they had to endure almost all day, the crowd got to enjoy all day
Continue readingInnings victories in cricket – good or bad?
< 1 minute readIt’s good if it’s your side that’s won, but if you’re impartial, it means that a Test has been one-sided. Australia’s innings victory over West Indies also raises uncomfortable and unwelcome questions about the future of the West Indies as a Test team, even if their best player, Adrian Barath,
Continue readingThe five best batsmen over the next five years
< 1 minute readThe big names are generally old bastards. Who’s next? Ross Taylor, New Zealand, age 25 Ross Taylor tends to look like he’s the man who’s going to win the match for New Zealand shortly before doing something slightly spacky. Pretty soon those fifties will become hundreds and those hundreds will
Continue readingRahul Dravid still has some runs to score
< 1 minute readDid anyone outside India really think that Rahul Dravid should have been dropped at any point during his relatively prolonged spell of poor form? We certainly didn’t. It’s Rahul Dravid. Looking back now, it seems that run of poor form ended about this time last year in Mohali when he
Continue readingSachin Tendulkar – 20 years of batting like this is just astonishing
3 minute readDid you know that it took 78 one-day internationals for Sachin Tendulkar to score a hundred? It’s an odd fact, that, considering he’s squeezed in another 44 since then, including a whopping 175 against Australia today. It’s sometimes difficult to appreciate Sachin Tendulkar properly. It’s like thinking about the vast
Continue readingMahendra Dhoni is really very cool
< 1 minute readMahendra Dhoni, flustered? India are three wickets down in no time on a pitch that’s nastier than Satan when his haemorrhoids are playing up. Dhoni: “Yeaaaaah. I’ll probably just stick around for 30 overs or so before basically just mincing the ball wherever I please when we get within touching
Continue readingMahendra Dhoni strolls back into town
< 1 minute readJust the other day we were wondering whether any of Mahendra Dhoni’s millions of fans had actually noticed that he doesn’t really obliterate the bowling any more. Despite the fact that he scores far more runs now, we wondered whether he was largely buoyed by residual love from when he
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