2 minute readMichael Clarke has launched an astonishing broadside against his team-mate Steven Smith ahead of this summer’s Ashes series. The Australian captain claims that Smith will struggle to make any sort of impact this summer despite now being ranked the best Test batsman in the world. Responding to Graeme Swann’s assertion
Continue readingCategory: News
Was this the greatest ever one-day series decider?
< 1 minute readAnd is ‘number of wicketkeepers in squad’ the key metric when predicting the likelihood of success nowadays? Sod net practice, let’s get everyone squatting down with Bruce French for hours at a time. Who’s got a spare room? We’re starting to think we should invite New Zealand to move in.
Continue readingLangoustines? From England?
2 minute readWe kept an eye on this one-day series between England and New Zealand while we were away, but we were rather too preoccupied eating squid to read as much about it as we normally would. It was therefore slightly odd to return to lots of articles of the oeuvre ‘is
Continue readingHow New Zealand kept their distance from ‘the line’
< 1 minute readNew Zealand’s performance against England in the recently-completed Test series was the most relentlessly aggressive we can remember. There have been examples of individual players adopting a persistent attacking approach before now, but look back on those series and you’ll tend to find obdurate batting and dry bowling from a
Continue readingWhat do you want from your spinner? Control? Magic balls?
2 minute readShortly before Adil Rashid bowled his ninth over in the first one-day international, the 28th of the innings, one of the Sky commentators said that captain Eoin Morgan would be delighted that he had ‘got through his overs’ by this early point. That’s the kind of banality you’ll often hear
Continue readingJos Buttler and Joe Root get the message
2 minute readWhy, England, why? Why do you only now bat with no fear of consequences in this inconsequential one-day game? Why couldn’t you bat with no fear of consequences in the World Cup, back when there were consequences? That’s only partly jaded cynicism It’s mainly just our way of saying that
Continue readingEngland attempt to relight their one-day fire
2 minute readAs the old saying goes, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and if the smoke drifts into the dressing room, you should probably exit there as well. A number of England one-day players have exited both kitchen and dressing room for this series, although some
Continue readingGlen Chapple is playing cricket and pretending he’s not great at it
< 1 minute readSo we’re calling him out on it. For every Shivnarine Chanderpaul, trying to convince people he’s still got it at the age of 40, there’s a Glen Chapple, sidling into a coaching position and inexplicably trying to convince everyone that he hasn’t still got it. Chapple’s not fooling anyone. >
Continue readingThis is the way a cricket career ends, not with a bang
2 minute readHurray! Friday! Let’s celebrate by writing about melancholy exits! We’ve sadly had two recently. Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s international career ended just as he imagined it would when he first took up the sport as a boy, with a WhatsApp exchange between Test series. Meanwhile, Craig Kieswetter has had to call it
Continue readingLeicestershire complete their sentence
< 1 minute readAt some point in 2013, Leicestershire were cut by the thunder. From then on, draws and losses appeared to be the only possible outcomes following four days of championship cricket. That’s a dispiriting world in which to live, sounding almost like something imposed on them by a judge. However, the
Continue reading