2 minute readIt can be hard to keep up with Pakistan’s playing staff. Mitchell Marsh gets a debut and great tracts of webspace are devoted to him, explaining what this decision means and why it’s such a monumental event. In contrast, Pakistan players ghost into the side and it’s only when they’ve
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Pakistan thrive on hardship and chaos
< 1 minute readPakistan. Is there any sporting team in the world for which the link between sound preparation and performance is less meaningful? Having lost what was arguably the best new ball attack of its time as a result of that spot fixing thing, Pakistan rebuilt their bowling around Saeed Ajmal. Being
Continue readingMop-up of the day – stealth, Siddle, celebrations and social media
2 minute readFirst up, Pakistan v Australia where the ‘home’ side appear to be doing a reasonable job of putting a score on the board. It’s always hard to tell what’s a decent first innings total, but with Pakistan’s flaky batting, you reckon they’d be pretty happy already. Stealth The major contributor
Continue readingSteve O’Keefe and Imran Khan
< 1 minute readSteve O’Keefe’s finally been picked to play a Test match for Australia. We mentioned him as far back as 2010 as being a spinner who wasn’t completely rubbish, but who was somehow being overlooked in favour of any number of slow bowlers who were. O’Keefe’s the second spinner, so Australia
Continue readingSouth Africa’s 2015 World Cup strategy
2 minute readIs it a sign of a good side that they can get away with working to a fairly predictable strategy? Innovation is often a way of making up for shortcomings. South Africa’s approach to one-day cricket is what comes up by default in cricket strategy software. You’re meant to tweak
Continue readingAbandoned West Indies tour is not in the spirit of cricket
2 minute readWe consider the Spirit of Cricket – the branded, upper-case initial letter creation of the MCC – to be a nebulous pile of bollocks. You can quote us on that. However, that isn’t to say that there is no such thing as the spirit of cricket. The Spirit of Cricket
Continue readingPakistan’s 2015 World Cup strategy
< 1 minute readSame as ever really. Just sort of hope that everything magically works itself out. Shahid Afridi is a tremendously good one-day bowler, but you’d hope to see a stronger attack alongside him. Seven foot Mohammad Irfan is the novelty, while Junaid Khan is perhaps the class. But it’s the batting
Continue readingKP v ECB on Twitter – a medieval battle with an invisible audience
3 minute readOur latest Twitter round-up’s just appeared on Cricinfo. It was an unusually tough assignment. We’d sign into Twitter, get distracted by the latest developments arising from Kevin Pietersen’s autobiography and then find that we’d lost an hour or more. We’d then force ourself to close down Twitter so that we
Continue readingThe West Indies’ 2015 World Cup strategy
2 minute readLet’s take a day off from the office politics and instead take a look at some cricket. The West Indies beat India today. Hypothesis testing One of the most interesting things in the run-in to the World Cup – often more interesting than the tournament itself – is that we
Continue readingCan we please dissolve the ECB?
< 1 minute readWe support the England cricket team. We will always support the England cricket team. It’s just that it would be so, so, so much easier to support the England cricket team if it weren’t being run by the England and Wales Cricket Board. The Pakistan Cricket Board is mental, the
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