4 minute readBefore this third Test, Sri Lanka had already lost the series. They hadn’t had much of a warm-up; hadn’t played first-class cricket on these shores since 2016; and England were increasingly hell-bent on imposing themselves. It had been a tough shift, in short, and they could be forgiven for imploding
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2 minute readJosh Hull is only the second left-arm seamer to play a Test for England since Ryan Sidebottom in 2010. At 6ft 7in, he’s tall too. These are very attractive qualities which Hull has had to make zero effort to develop. Confidence is a funny thing. A lot of intelligent, pragmatic,
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3 minute readBrendon McCullum has been given a new hat – the England white ball coach hat. What we want to know is whether this new role comes with a literal, physical new hat, because we’re kind of sick of that Cinch one. This is the Cinch hat. This is what Brendon
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3 minute readYou may have guessed that we didn’t see much of this one. But that’s okay – we can read a scorecard with the best of them. England won. It is 2-0. Here are some things that apparently happened… Joe Root one-ups himself Has Joe Root finally hit upon a way
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2 minute readThere is a void in our life. Ever since The Great Neil Wagner retired, we haven’t had an unsuppressible affection for an ostensibly innocuous Test cricketer who is somehow successful in spite of apparent physical limitations. Asitha Fernando? Could it be you? The main problem with Sri Lanka’s Test Fernandos
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3 minute readBeing as it comprises three whole Tests, it’s probably inaccurate to describe this England v Sri Lanka series as ‘short’. After all, this is an era when two Tests inside a fortnight supposedly qualifies as a ‘series’. But while there’s technically a first, second and third Test between these two
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3 minute readIf your sporting memory stretches this far back, you may remember that James Anderson opted to retire from Test cricket shortly after he was invited to retire from Test cricket by Brendon McCullum, Ben Stokes and Rob Key. Their reasoning was that it was time to look towards “the future”.
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3 minute readThis may have passed you by, but South Africa Test coach Shukri Conrad gave a slightly odd explanation for why Tristan Stubbs has become their new number three. It was one of those moments where you wonder whether you’re getting a weird insight into another culture’s values. Speaking to Cricinfo,
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3 minute readAt the time of writing, it looks like Ben Stokes’ left leg needs to be re-hamstrung after a twanging incident while running a single for Northern Superchargers earlier in the week. (Would the same thing have happened had he been playing for Northern Gentle Amblers? We can never know.) This
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8 minute readWe don’t know whether Graham Thorpe was underappreciated exactly, because it seems like every England supporter who watched him play in fact valued him immensely. We do feel that Thorpe has been under-written-about though… so we’ve written about him. If you want a sense of what Thorpe meant to England
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