< 1 minute readWe said you were going to start noticing everyone going mental about Mason Crane. Today marks an obvious step-up in mentalgoing as it seems highly likely the leg-spinner will make his international debut. Indirectly referring to him, AB de Villiers grappled with the meaning of the word ‘unknown’. “A few
Continue readingCategory: News
Peak Pakistan
2 minute readScrape into a tournament through being ranked eighth in the world, throw in a few debutants, win the thing. Quite often you get to play Pakistan. Occasionally you have to play Pakistan. India suffered the latter. How in blazes? If we were to imagine that winning a cricket tournament involved
Continue readingVideo: Virat Kohli dropped off Mohammad Amir… Virat Kohli caught off Mohammad Amir
< 1 minute readPakistan often lunge enthusiastically towards the ridiculous in the firm knowledge that this is their best hope of rebounding to sublime cricket – but even for them this moment was something else. There is a strong argument that Virat Kohli is the finest one-day batsman there’s ever been. He is
Continue readingNine things to watch out for when India play Pakistan in the Champions Trophy final
2 minute readThere are all sorts of India v Pakistan previews out there, but this is currently the only one on this website that goes up to nine. 1. Jasprit Bumrah’s bowling action Evidence, if it were needed, that the “hey, what’s that over there?” bowling ploy can work just as well
Continue readingIndia v Bangladesh goes pretty much exactly how everyone expected
< 1 minute readWho would have thought this match would turn out exactly as everyone expected it to? What were the odds on that? Extremely slim, you’d have thought, what with the extraordinary wealth of alternative outcomes. Tamim Iqbal played a good innings and there was reasonable support from one of Bangladesh’s middle-order
Continue readingThere was a rumour that England had ‘solved’ one-day cricket
< 1 minute readNot the case. It was perhaps true that they’d solved modern one-day cricket… but then they came up against Pakistan. As we said the other day, Pakistan don’t care what year it is. They don’t care how other people are approaching one-day cricket these days, they just do their own
Continue readingIf Jason Roy is “due” what will happen to all those runs he saved up?
< 1 minute readJust because someone’s due, it doesn’t mean anything’s actually going to happen any time soon. Trust us on this. Referring to Jason Roy, Pakistan coach Mickey Arthur alluded to the concept of dueness, saying: “We had a discussion in the bus this morning. I was particularly worried that Roy hadn’t
Continue readingPakistan don’t care what year it is
< 1 minute read“300-plus scores? No, thank you. We’ll just persist with our old approach of bowling the opposition out for slightly less than our own low score, if that’s all right with you.” Pakistan held South Africa to 219-8 off 50 overs. Sri Lanka managed a whopping 236 all out against them.
Continue readingAustralia suffer forestation
< 1 minute readThat’s our way of saying they were Wooded. We wrote about the benefits of having Adil Rashid in your side a couple of days ago. Mark Wood offers something similar. Remember how the middle over used to be? It was like the batsmen saw everything in high-definition and everything moved
Continue readingWhy Shakib-al-Hasan is just about the finest shoe we’ve ever owned
< 1 minute readSometimes you buy a pair of shoes and it’s only after the first prolonged wear that they reveal their true feelings towards you. The sides rub, the soles feel like they’re made out of wood and the uppers are so rigid that they actually gouge into your ankle. ‘Accursed footwear!’
Continue reading