4 minute readMatt Renshaw, James Hildreth, Ollie Pope and Sam Northeast: four centurions in an April where wickets have arrived as frequently as buses on Manchester’s Oxford Road. Clearly we’re talking about all four of them. But let’s say we’re pressed for time and can only talk about one. Who should that
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“The other 10 balls will add a fresh tactical dimension”
2 minute read Of all the very many sizeable questions that arise from the ECB’s plan to introduce a new 100-ball format to cricket, the biggest one is surely this: how did they decide who had to have the “fresh tactical dimension” quote attributed to them? To quickly bring you up to
Continue readingIs Ed Smith in or out of a job?
2 minute readThe photo on the homepage of Ed Smith’s website is worth a look. It is from an actual photo shoot. We haven’t exactly done extensive research on this, but booking a photo shoot to get some pictures of yourself would seem to us to be quite an unusual thing for
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Olly Stone is who we’re talking about this week
2 minute readWarwickshire’s Olly Stone bowled a bouncer and on the strength of that became the county player everyone’s talking about this week. In the 18th over, Stone dismissed Luke Wells and then the very next ball he bounced out Luke Wright. If you play for Sussex and you are a Luke
Continue readingI Don’t Like Cricket, I Hate It – the county cricket and crying Aussies edition
3 minute readA semi-regular feature in which we ask a fella going by the name of Prince Prefab about cricket – even though he hates cricket. We are in bold. Prince Prefab is not. King Cricket: We’re speaking now on the eve of the County Championship and I am all the way
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Who will initially be named as a County Championship title contender but actually end up getting relegated?
2 minute readThe first week of the County Championship is a great time for predictions. We’ve gone through a whole bunch of previews to pick out the three teams who have most often been mentioned as favourites this year and we’re now going to try and predict which of those favourites will
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Does the IPL deserve its reputation?
12 minute readThe 2019 IPL is getting underway. It is the 12th edition. Last year we took a look at whether the IPL deserved it reputation. This is that article. Back in 2008 the IPL was a bombastic upstart that threw huge sums of money at all the big name players. Now
Continue readingEngland need a short-pitched specialist like Neil Wagner
< 1 minute readAsking someone to bowl with the old ball is not the same as picking someone who has built their career around bowling with the old ball. Asking someone to bowl short is not the same as picking someone who has built their entire career around bowling short. Being tall does
Continue readingExactly how bad was Australia’s tour of South Africa?
5 minute readMost Test tours are bad tours these days because it is rare for any team to win away from home. That said, there are different degrees of badness. We have a faint suspicion that Australia’s recently-completed tour of South Africa might have been unusually bad. Let’s try and work out
Continue readingThe fourth innings ‘ball hundred’
< 1 minute readRuns are not always the objective for a batsman. If a team finds itself behind in a game such that a win becomes almost impossible, the objective generally becomes survival. Similarly, if you’re one-nil up in a series and it’s the final Test, a draw means a series win. In
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