< 1 minute readSunday starts for County Championship matches and Twenty20 matches on a Friday night. It ain’t all bad. The latter could even become ‘a thing’, as detailed here. Shall we try and make it a thing? What should it involve? Perhaps we could try and source beer brewed in the counties
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Living within the England panopticon
2 minute readWriting in The Times, Mike Atherton has said of the England setup: “The impression is of a closed, institutionalised and claustrophobic world.” We’re sure he chose his words carefully. It’s also worth noting that this is a man who felt the strains of international cricket despite only ever considering it
Continue readingWhy has Jonathan Trott gone home from the Ashes?
3 minute readFor all that we’re meant to be enlightened, modern folk who are au fait with mental health issues, there’s an odd reluctance to enter into specifics when someone is suffering ‘a stress-related illness’. Physical v mental In a sense, medical problems are nobody’s business but the sportsman in question. It
Continue readingDaubing England’s batsmen with emulsion
2 minute readToday’s grim moment of clarity came courtesy of Mark Butcher midway through the highlights which show immediately after the day’s play. “Michael Clarke made good decisions throughout this match,” he said. Note ‘made’ not ‘has made’. Australia had won then? The rest of the highlights were a joy, particularly when
Continue readingJonathan Trott and the short ball
2 minute readWe’re wondering whether we just saw the most unforgiveable dismissal of all time. There have been worse shots, certainly, but IJL Trott c Lyon b Johnson 9 ticks a lot of boxes. First, there’s the backdrop. For months, the opposition have told you that you can’t play the short ball
Continue readingBatting badly as a unit – and as individuals
2 minute readThere are times when you simply do not want to see James Anderson’s face. Switching on the TV at 6am was therefore a bleak moment. Upon noticing that he wasn’t wearing a helmet, the mental calculations were rapid, even at that hour. There was, quite simply, no way that this
Continue readingThe 27-year-old English medium pace bowler is far too much for Australia’s batsmen
< 1 minute readBrisbane’s Courier Mail floated the possibility of not mentioning Stuart Broad by name at all during this Test. Does anyone know if they did actually go with this front page in the end or was it just a canny publicity stunt? The newspaper suggested that they were only going to
Continue readingAnd now back to the cricket
< 1 minute readBecause time waits for no-one. You might think you can dawdle around, taking things in, but you can’t. Time is ravaging you. It’s a slow process, but it’s happening all the time. Your pancreas is getting wrinkly; your spleen is going grey; your brain is starting to ache in cold
Continue readingContinuing to miss Sachin Tendulkar
3 minute readConsidering he’s been the highest profile player for pretty much the whole time we’ve been following cricket, we’ve missed an awful lot of Sachin Tendulkar’s career. We went to the match in which he scored his first Test century, but we didn’t see him bat. Then, for a long time
Continue readingDarren Sammy’s surely on the way out, right?
2 minute readWe’ve got a Sachin Tendulkar post saved as a draft, but let’s look elsewhere today. Let’s look at the West Indies captain, Darren Sammy, who’s currently having a ‘mare. We rather like Sammy. Not just because his initials make him DJ Sammy, not just because he purveys genuine medium-pace and
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