< 1 minute read‘Bye bye Sachin, Rahul, Sourav and VVS, the new generation are here now. You guys are past it, but we’ll conquer Ajantha Mendis and Muttiah Muralitharan with ease.’ This is what India’s glittery one-day batting line-up might have said, but it would have been followed by a bit of a
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Mendissed-out
< 1 minute readWe can’t believe none of you have got anything to say about Andrew Strauss’s slow transformation into a slightly defective Blockatron 9000. We were sure you’d have strong feelings about that. How about Sri Lanka beating India? Have you got thoughts about that? We’re rather hoping that you do, because
Continue readingVirender Sehwag defies pretty much everyone and everything
< 1 minute readMurali. Vaas. Mendis. A pitch with one wet end and one cracked end. Rain. Reason. Virender Sehwag defied them all. Dravid, Tendulkar and Ganguly mustered seven between them. Gautam Gambhir had a lot of luck to edge his way to 56. VVS Laxman hung around for a bit. The tail
Continue readingCricket’s Champions Leagues
2 minute readThe Board of Control for Cricket in India, the BCCI, wishes to run a Champions League featuring Twenty20 sides from around the world. The BCCI backs the IPL Twenty20 league and says sides featuring players from the rival ICL can’t appear in its Champions League. Various county cricketers have played
Continue readingSri Lankan tactics
< 1 minute readSri Lanka have always had a good plan when playing at home, but it did have one slight flaw. Someone had to bowl at the other end. If you’re a touring side batting in a Test in Sri Lanka, you effectively play two different matches. At one end, you counter
Continue readingIt’s Mahela Jayawardene at the SSC. Again.
< 1 minute readIf Sanath Jayasuriya’s catchphrase would be ‘ha-haaaa‘, then Mahela Jayawardene’s ought to be just silence. He’s not speaking because he’s concentrating. Jayawardene averages near enough a hundred at Galle, but it’s at the Sinhalese Sports Club Ground that he REALLY likes batting. No-one’s ever scored more Test runs at a
Continue readingMalinda Warnapura’s hundred unexpectedly delights us
< 1 minute readWe think we might have subconsciously adopted Malinda Warnapura and we’ve no real idea when it happened or why. All we know is that he scored a hundred against India today and we thought ‘well played our guy’. At that point we stopped. ‘Wait a minute, why are we thinking
Continue readingAjantha Mendis to make his Test debut
< 1 minute readLet’s close our eyes to England’s filthy performance and instead imagine we’re in Sri Lanka. The sun is shining, monkeys are rife, you’re having string hoppers for breakfast and Sri Lanka are playing India in Colombo. They’ll already have started by now and Ajantha Mendis should be playing. Unfortunately, Lasith
Continue readingThe India itinerary – good and also rubbish
2 minute readEngland tour India over the winter. They play two Tests, which is clearly too few. They will also play seven one-day internationals, which is clearly a huge waste of everyone’s time. You can’t blame India. The last time England toured, the Test series was drawn while the one-dayers were so
Continue readingAjantha Mendis sorts everything out
< 1 minute readSanath Jayasuriya might have pummelled a trademark hundred, but Ajantha Mendis won Sri Lanka the Asia Cup. If you want to see some impressive bowling figures, read on: 6-13 off eight overs. Virender Sehwag had hit a 26-ball fifty when Mendis came on to bowl, so the young spinner basically
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