< 1 minute readMurali’s always had a certain approach to batting. Have a ruddy great swing at the ball Miss Have an even bigger swing at the next one Usually this method fails for reasons that are fairly clear even to Murali. Occasionally it doesn’t and he hits 33 off 16 balls to
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Sachin Tendulkar has the most Test runs
< 1 minute readNo-one’s scored more Test runs than Sachin Tendulkar and after passing Brian Lara’s record, he went on to pass 12,000 runs as well. We’d say that he was the first to do so, but you can probably deduce that easily enough. It is very hard to express the significance of
Continue readingYou’re reading about the Test when there’s Twenty20 on?
< 1 minute readThere are two articles. One says Twenty20’s clearly going to kill Test cricket. One says that probably, on balance, that won’t happen. Newspaper editors will tend to publish the first one. The former’s punchier and it provokes debate, so we get to read a disproportionate number of articles about how
Continue readingZaheer Khan wins an ODI with the ball
< 1 minute readAnother one-day international is decided with the ball. Huzzah. It went the other way this time, however. Zaheer Khan took 4-21 and Sri Lanka crumpled like a supermarket receipt to 142 all out. We’re increasingly thinking that if there’s swing, you want Zaheer Khan in your side. Bowlers continued to
Continue readingIndia change their batting faces to no great effect
< 1 minute read‘Bye bye Sachin, Rahul, Sourav and VVS, the new generation are here now. You guys are past it, but we’ll conquer Ajantha Mendis and Muttiah Muralitharan with ease.’ This is what India’s glittery one-day batting line-up might have said, but it would have been followed by a bit of a
Continue readingMendissed-out
< 1 minute readWe can’t believe none of you have got anything to say about Andrew Strauss’s slow transformation into a slightly defective Blockatron 9000. We were sure you’d have strong feelings about that. How about Sri Lanka beating India? Have you got thoughts about that? We’re rather hoping that you do, because
Continue readingVirender Sehwag defies pretty much everyone and everything
< 1 minute readMurali. Vaas. Mendis. A pitch with one wet end and one cracked end. Rain. Reason. Virender Sehwag defied them all. Dravid, Tendulkar and Ganguly mustered seven between them. Gautam Gambhir had a lot of luck to edge his way to 56. VVS Laxman hung around for a bit. The tail
Continue readingSri Lankan tactics
< 1 minute readSri Lanka have always had a good plan when playing at home, but it did have one slight flaw. Someone had to bowl at the other end. If you’re a touring side batting in a Test in Sri Lanka, you effectively play two different matches. At one end, you counter
Continue readingIt’s Mahela Jayawardene at the SSC. Again.
< 1 minute readIf Sanath Jayasuriya’s catchphrase would be ‘ha-haaaa‘, then Mahela Jayawardene’s ought to be just silence. He’s not speaking because he’s concentrating. Jayawardene averages near enough a hundred at Galle, but it’s at the Sinhalese Sports Club Ground that he REALLY likes batting. No-one’s ever scored more Test runs at a
Continue readingMalinda Warnapura’s hundred unexpectedly delights us
< 1 minute readWe think we might have subconsciously adopted Malinda Warnapura and we’ve no real idea when it happened or why. All we know is that he scored a hundred against India today and we thought ‘well played our guy’. At that point we stopped. ‘Wait a minute, why are we thinking
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