< 1 minute readTo further clarify our feelings about the Twenty20 Champions League, it’ll be interesting precisely as long as there’s a chance that the budget sides might make a joke out of the rampant capitalism on which the whole thing is built. Basically, if Somerset beat Deccan Chargers, it’ll be pretty funny
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England players to watch
< 1 minute readEven beyond our own knee-high standards, our 2009 county cricketers to watch have come good. Liam Plunkett is in England’s winter Test squad and has therefore proven himself an obdurate and pleasing stain on the second-favourite T-shirt that is England cricket – possibly a turmeric-based stain that could be around
Continue readingExperience in Test cricket helps players perform
< 1 minute readThose writing about cricket bandy the word ‘experience’ around until it ceases to have any meaning, but it’s easy to overlook the significant role it plays in terms of how a player performs. Experience isn’t just a statistic. It isn’t how many games someone’s played. It’s different conditions, different environments
Continue readingHow do you feel about the Twenty20 Champions’ League?
< 1 minute readWhen we were younger and interested in both cricket and football, we thought that cricket could learn from club football. Now, having pretty much completely forsaken football due to it having become an earth-rattling shodfest that’s part soap opera and part corporate dick-swinging contest, we’re a bit worried that cricket
Continue readingShoaib Akhtar undergoes abstract expressionistic rehabilitation
< 1 minute readShoaib Akhtar is going to get himself mended by Andrew Flintoff’s surgeon. “I hear that he is like an artist with knees and that his expertise is second to none.” Don’t most artists have knees? It’s not an occupation specifically reserved for the fixed-legged is it?
Continue readingBask in the glorious scene
< 1 minute readBefore the Champions’ Trophy began, ICC chief executive, Haroon Lorgat, gave it the big sell: “This is short, sharp and exciting. We have also created a winner’s jacket.” He didn’t say he’d created MULTIPLE winners’ jackets. You know you’re good at something when you get given a jacket to wear
Continue readingWanting Shane Watson to reach his hundred
< 1 minute readHow can we possibly have found ourself wanting Shane Watson to get a hundred. He was on 92 and Australia needed eight to win the Champions’ Trophy. Why on earth did we want him to reach three figures? Seriously, why? This isn’t rhetoric. We actually want an explanation. He’s ridiculously
Continue readingKevin Pietersen ready to abandon England so he can get more money elsewhere
< 1 minute readThat’s an exaggerated version of the kind of headline that’s been cropping up after Kevin Pietersen’s interview with the Observer. It’s a shame that’s the angle that’s taken, because actually Pietersen’s got a lot of sense in him and it gets washed away by all the indignant, semi-xenophobic spitting that
Continue readingInconsistency in Australian cricket
< 1 minute readBert writes: A common comment you hear from Australians, is that they lost the 2009 Ashes series because they were “inconsistent”. However, what they have failed to understand is that in cricket, especially Test match cricket, ‘inconsistent’ is a direct synonym for ‘rubbish’. An inconsistent batsman plays a couple of
Continue readingEoin Morgan – keep him at five or six
< 1 minute readEoin Morgan can play mental reverse sweeps and ping shots into someone’s picnic off the weighty part of his bat, but we’re most impressed by the fact that he seems largely unarsed about playing international cricket. He plays straight, he wanders down the pitch, maybe he edges the ball, but
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