< 1 minute read For those who don’t know what Sri Lanka v India is, it’s kind of like the Ashes, only they don’t make the losing team play a fifth Test. Or a fourth one. Sri Lanka seem to have turned a little bit insipid. They coped with Muttiah Muralitharan’s retirement surprisingly well
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Kumar Sangakkara and the magic numbers
< 1 minute read Remember The Magic Numbers? Are they still going? Wikipedia says they are. Chart positions say they aren’t really. But this post isn’t about The Magic Numbers. It’s about Kumar Sangakkara’s magic numbers. Scorecards never tell you the full story, but when a batsman’s made 203 out of 356 in response
Continue readingBrendon McCullum and Angelo Mathews: Conjoined Lord Megachiefs of Gold 2014
4 minute read We’re never sure why people are so averse to comparing apples and oranges. They’re both fruit, after all. It’s not like comparing ox heart and communism. Like apples and oranges, Brendon McCullum and Angelo Mathews are quite different, but also have rather a lot in common. Why a dual award?
Continue readingMuralimania and English cricket’s monomania
2 minute read Today we’re going to direct you towards two pieces of ours which appeared outside the kingdom. First up, our latest King of Cricket is Murali. Don’t worry, it ain’t all numbers. It’s about the joints, the graft and the batting really. Secondly, last week’s Cricinfo piece, entitled English cricket rocked
Continue readingA successful England run chase – but it never would have lasted
< 1 minute read Here’s a joke for you: What do a 35-over a side game in Habantota and a 50-over match in New Zealand or Australia have in common? Pretty funny, eh? In the third match of this series, Sri Lanka were positively blown away by England’s tactic of randomly selecting a load
Continue readingMoeen Ali foolishly expects other England players to score some of the runs
< 1 minute read That’s okay. That’s what these tours are for. Moeen will have learnt from this. From now on, he’ll know that 119 off 87 balls simply isn’t enough and he’ll instead score 180 off 110 balls or whatever. Other than that, one of the great joys of the first one-day international
Continue readingMop-up of the day – heads and faces
2 minute read Can New Zealand do what Australia couldn’t and give Pakistan a decent Test match? Brendon McCullum’s already made a major contribution to his team’s cause in the second Test by winning the toss. We don’t actually know whether McCullum went for heads or tails or whether he just passively watched
Continue readingMop-up of the day – Younus Khan’s bat and Murali’s balls
2 minute read Younus Khan’s just made his third Test hundred on the bounce. We mentioned that he was underrated after the first one. Let’s revisit that. We all know Younus averages some way north of 50 and that he’s now made Test hundreds against every nation, but let’s dig a little deeper.
Continue readingMoeen Ali and Jimmy Anderson – kings in defeat
2 minute read The final pole was taken with just a cherry to spare. But just as a snatched draw wouldn’t have erased England’s shoddy cricket from the previous day, so falling short shouldn’t negate the efforts of Moeen Ali and Jimmy Anderson. Jimmy was basically in tears when Mike Atherton tried to
Continue readingAngelo Mathews pulls off skin and something special
< 1 minute read Just because it’s only a two-Test series, it doesn’t mean you’re playing Bangladesh. This Sri Lanka side is a good one. If anything, it’s their achievements that are being devalued by the quality of the opposition. But they can only beat what’s put in front of them. In this Test,
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