< 1 minute readThat is… stellar. Particularly when you consider that he made three off 58 balls in the first innings. He wasn’t alone either. You can see the full deadbattery in scorecard format here. South Africa were playing for a draw to secure the series and succeeded in fine complete-absence-of-style. Rangana Herath
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Four bowlers, five runs and one Gary Ballance
2 minute readAfter winning the previous Test with four-and-a-bit bowlers, India could have gone either way for this one. Unsurprisingly, they went with four bowlers, not five. Sometimes you can determine a lot from these fifty-fifty calls and MS Dhoni does seem to be a bit of a ‘pick the extra batsman’
Continue readingTest match start days and the concept of ‘appointment to view’
< 1 minute readThis year they moved the Twenty20 Cup to Friday nights to create an ‘appointment to view’. The premise is if people know when matches are being played, there’s a better chance they’ll watch. This year also sees a five-Test series taking place between England and India which boasts four different
Continue readingAlastair Cook should stick to the day job
2 minute readCaptaincy is an odd thing. It always strikes us that becoming captain is like being a writer promoted to a management position. We’ve had jobs where a senior colleague with a stupid job title has come up to us and basically said: “Your writing and editing is so good that
Continue readingAnother England cricketer eroded
< 1 minute readAfter Matt Prior missed one particular catch in the second Test, a Sky commentator – possibly Mike Atherton – suggested that the wicketkeeper might be having trouble moving to his right due to all his accumulated injury problems. In his statement announcing that he was standing down for the rest
Continue readingIshant Sharma with the short ball at Lord’s
2 minute readIt’s an unlikely Cluedo solution, but it happened. We saw it with our own eyes. Joe Root was the third caught attacking the short ball after lunch and he did a cracking Charlie Brown slope upon being dismissed. It was really, really first class. We were in awe. We don’t
Continue readingAnd again England concede runs to the lower order
< 1 minute readIt’s okay to start headlines with ‘and’ when you’re emphasising the repetitive nature of something. Ravindra Jadeja isn’t exactly the tail, of course. Even if you play half your domestic matches on the world’s flattest pitch, scoring three triple hundreds shifts you out of the tail-end category never to return.
Continue readingAlastair Cook failed to ration his runs
< 1 minute readVirat Kohli’s due a score, isn’t he? And how many runs has Alastair Cook got in his bag, just waiting to be plucked out? Or is it more that Cook’s now suffering the inevitable consequences of frittering runs away earlier in his career. There was a complete lack of rationing
Continue readingGary Ballance bares his teeth
< 1 minute readA lot. It seems to be his default facial expression while batting. It’s a little disconcerting. But on the plus side, we’ve already started thinking to ourself: “At least Ballance is still in,” as if he’s the most reliable of the England batsmen. Like Jonathan Trott, you don’t really feel
Continue readingAjinkya Rahane v Suresh Raina
2 minute readOkay, turns out we do have something else to say. It’s to do with who’s a good batsman. We don’t want this to become a Suresh Raina bashing thing, because we’ve a certain amount of time for him. He does certain things better than almost anyone. The issue is that
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