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
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Olly Stone is who we’re talking about this week
2 minute readWarwickshire’s Olly Stone bowled a bouncer and on the strength of that became the county player everyone’s talking about this week. In the 18th over, Stone dismissed Luke Wells and then the very next ball he bounced out Luke Wright. If you play for Sussex and you are a Luke
Continue readingI Don’t Like Cricket, I Hate It – the county cricket and crying Aussies 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. King Cricket: We’re speaking now on the eve of the County Championship and I am all the way
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Who will initially be named as a County Championship title contender but actually end up getting relegated?
2 minute readThe first week of the County Championship is a great time for predictions. We’ve gone through a whole bunch of previews to pick out the three teams who have most often been mentioned as favourites this year and we’re now going to try and predict which of those favourites will
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Does the IPL deserve its reputation?
12 minute readThe 2019 IPL is getting underway. It is the 12th edition. Last year we took a look at whether the IPL deserved it reputation. This is that article. Back in 2008 the IPL was a bombastic upstart that threw huge sums of money at all the big name players. Now
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 readingExactly how bad was Australia’s tour of South Africa?
5 minute readMost Test tours are bad tours these days because it is rare for any team to win away from home. That said, there are different degrees of badness. We have a faint suspicion that Australia’s recently-completed tour of South Africa might have been unusually bad. Let’s try and work out
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 readingWhy did Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft think that cheating using sandpaper was worse than doing the exact same cheating using something that wasn’t technically sandpaper?
3 minute readWhen we first saw Cameron Bancroft tampering with the ball using sandpaper, we thought to ourself: “That is sandpaper” – and so did everyone else. We were therefore very much surprised when he later claimed that it was not in fact sandpaper but something akin to home-made sandpaper. “We had
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