3 minute readAfter securing a big win over Kent on Saturday, Surrey are even more top of the County Championship. This should be no great surprise being as they’re reigning County Champions, but it’s still not entirely clear to us how they’re achieving this. Last week the gap between Surrey and second-placed
Continue reading
4 minute readZak Crawley is not a popular man in some quarters. If you want a measure of this, you could do worse than count how many times his name cropped up in this week’s discussion about wicketkeepers. “And yet Zak Crawley still gets picked,” was a common reaction to the news
Continue reading
2 minute read“Ben [Foakes] is the best wicketkeeper in the world,” said Ben Stokes last summer. “That’s not just my own opinion, that’s a lot of people’s opinions.” Since Stokes said that, Foakes has been left out of England’s Test team in favour of Ollie Pope – who isn’t even a wicketkeeper
Continue reading
2 minute readWarwickshire looked set for another thumping win on Saturday. That they ultimately only delivered a slightly awkward one was however rather less important than what Surrey’s Rory Burns had already done elsewhere against Middlesex. Still dangerously armed with a Chris Rushworth, Warwickshire were able to dismiss Essex for 126 and
Continue reading
2 minute readThey say that elite sport involves making sacrifices. We’re wondering whether Warwickshire’s Sam Hain is coming to realise that he might have to sacrifice his highly awful haircut. Sam Hain had a great season last year. He then started this season very well before continuing it almost as well. At
Continue reading
2 minute readWarwickshire have only won two of their four games, yet both those victories have been scary enough to take them equal top of the County Championship. Last month Warwickshire secured one of those innings victories where even the term ‘innings victory’ doesn’t really do justice to the margin. They took
Continue reading
4 minute readRajasthan Royals owner Manoj Badale has told the BBC that, “We are going to have to think creatively about Test cricket if we want it to work.” This was shortly after he’d said the quiet bit out loud. It’s easy to characterise IPL franchise owners as ravenous financial speculators with
Continue reading
2 minute readSurrey have learned from Hampshire. If you want to advance your cause in the County Championship, play a match. It seems so simple, but you’d be surprised how many teams fail to take this obvious first step. Surrey and Warwickshire were early front-runners in the Championship, but got complacent, kicked
Continue reading
2 minute read“It is tough and it’s only going to get tougher,” said Ireland captain Andrew Balbirnie after Sri Lanka won the first Test by an innings and 280 runs. That seemed a wildly inaccurate assessment at the time – and indeed so it has proven. Ireland conceded 591-6 in the first
Continue reading
2 minute readYou’ve got to keep your eye on Hampshire – they’re devious fiends. If you were to attempt to prosecute Hampshire for the crime of sly deviousness, Exhibit A in your case would be their continued use of a relentlessly accurate seam bowling attack, none of whom are likely to get
Continue reading