Is a draw in Sri Lanka a good result?

< 1 minute readHistorically, a drawn Test series in Sri Lanka is a pretty good result for England. Set against that is the fact that Muttiah Muralitharan doesn’t play any more. Sri Lanka’s bowlers are a bit middling. Should England have done better? Well we’re pretty happy with a draw, particularly after watching

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Mahela Jayawardene v England

< 1 minute readAs abysmal as England’s batsmen have been, the team would stand a pretty decent chance of beating Sri Lanka if they didn’t spend most of their time in the field attempting to dismiss just one of the two batsmen at the crease. If they’re in Sri Lanka, England are probably

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Lahiru Thirimanne makes himself big

2 minute readBrace yourself, we’re going to mention football. One thing we learned from our years watching that soap opera-cum-sport is that a goalie should ‘make himself big’ when a forward is bearing down on him. The purpose of this is not, as you might think, to ward off predators. It is

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Playing the long game in Sri Lanka

< 1 minute readSamit Patel’s cricket statistics are being weighed against his vital statistics even more frequently of late. Is he fit enough for five-day cricket? It’s an interesting question, but we’re actually more interested in how the other England players cope. Even if Patel plays, we can’t see a debutant playing the

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Lasith Malinga leads the bowlers

< 1 minute readIt’s nice to see bowlers being decisive in a Twenty20 match. Far too often they might as well just glue different mugshots onto a bowling machine and use that instead. In the Champions League final, Mumbai successfully defended 139. For a large proportion of the match, the commentators were talking

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Sanath Jayasuriya’s last match

< 1 minute readSanath Jayasuriya has finally bowed out of cricket just three days short of his 70th birthday. He departed how he had thrived, with a ferocious cut shot. Asked to reflect on his career, Jayasuriya may or may not have said: “Eh? What? Speak up. Why does everybody mumble these days?

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