< 1 minute readYou often get the impression with Nick Compton that if it weren’t for media scrutiny, the doubters and his own desire to succeed, he’d be just fine. That would be some luxury though. Test cricket doesn’t work that way. You don’t really earn a Test place. You earn the right
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Yet another reason why Test matches should always start on a Thursday
< 1 minute readWe write Cricket Badger and Cricinfo’s Twitter round-up on a Thursday so we sometimes don’t find time to do a proper match preview if a Test starts on a Friday. Granted, this is perhaps not one of the greater considerations when the powers that be are scheduling cricket matches, but
Continue readingBrummie Kryptonite and unbeaten failures – this week’s County Championship round-up
2 minute readLet’s write a pointless opening sentence so that the formatting doesn’t look quite so weird when we give the Warwickshire v Durham game its own subheading. Warwickshire v Durham Warwickshire were very much on top after two days, but somehow, after making 313 and bowling Durham out for 190, they
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James Vince: first look in Test cricket
< 1 minute readWe have a general belief that a player’s first Test appearance is near-worthless in terms of evaluating his quality. It therefore seemed to make perfect sense for us to start documenting players’ debuts. This is the first of those pieces. We said we had faint misgivings about James Vince ahead
Continue readingWhy play Test cricket in the North of England in spring? Why play there at all?
3 minute readSome have questioned why Tests are scheduled for the North of England in May. The weather has been used as one argument against doing so, but attendances have earned a few mentions too. Let’s take a look at where Test cricket is played in England and when, and examine the
Continue readingJames Anderson fully capable of spending nine years at the wrong end
< 1 minute readIf ever you want to form a pantomime horse with James Anderson, don’t expect him to dress appropriately the first time. Don’t expect him to get it right the second time, third time, or fourth time either. But give him a while. After nine years of equine double-arsedness, he might
Continue readingThe impossible James Anderson
< 1 minute readPeople often say of a spell that a bowler ‘looked like taking a wicket every ball’. It’s rhetoric. What they mean is that the player in question looked far more likely to take a wicket than you would normally expect. So let’s word it differently. In his second spell against
Continue readingJonny Bairstow has a fridge door full of hundreds
2 minute readAbout a year ago, we started getting milk delivered – you know, like how people used to back in the Eighties. No longer do we have to carry weighty flagons of milk in amongst the rest of the big shop; now it just materialises on our doorstep, as if by
Continue readingEngland’s dodgy drivers dobbled by deadly Dasun
< 1 minute readThe received wisdom is that you don’t get wickets in Test cricket with dibbly-dobbly medium-pace. This is actually entirely accurate – but only because nobody picks dibbly-dobbly medium-pacers for Tests. The truth is that dibbly-dobbly is tough for Test batsmen. Their net bowlers are 85mph, their bowling machines are 85mph.
Continue readingSamit Patel is a big fat loser – a majestic, admirable, envied, big fat loser (plus a round-up of this week’s other first division matches)
2 minute readIf respect were something tangible and delicious rather than an abstract concept, Samit Patel earned more of it than even he could eat this week. He also won the battle of the Patels. What he did not win was ‘the match for Nottinghamshire against Warwickshire’. The man Kevin Pietersen calls
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