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Adil Rashid is England’s best player and don’t let anyone or anything tell you otherwise. (Definitely don’t let anything tell you otherwise. Don’t start listening to the toaster on this one. What the hell does it know?)
Rashid’s job is to create chaos when the opposition batsmen get used to pace bowling and start accumulating runs effortlessly and without risk. He spins the ball both ways, he pretty much always takes wickets and if he also concedes a few runs – well, don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that’s kind of how one-day cricket works these days.
Loads of batsmen score quickly. Scoring quickly is normal. What is no longer normal is a bowler who routinely dismisses batsmen when they’ve got their eye in and every other ball seems to be going to the boundary. This is what Adil Rashid does. The fact that this is inexplicably undervalued by pretty much everyone commenting on one-day cricket is either monumentally annoying or half the joy. We can’t decide which.
Rashid is also the finest timer of a cricket ball in the entire England batting line-up; a quality that he almost wholly negates by only ever attempting to play the most ludicrously low percentage shots.
Let us tell you about the other members of England’s World Cup squad
Is there one Red Dwarf reference per article?
Wonder if I’ve missed some in the preceding bios.
Also an urgent question that cannot go unasked: would anyone like toast?
Ha. This one was entirely accidental.
We want no muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes, or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes, and no hot cross buns, and definitely, no smeggin’ flapjacks!
Ah, so you’re a waffle man!
That Kholi wicket…. sheesh, pretty much everything you just said (with the exception of the batting which I also agree with). I keep hearing whispers about him being injured- KC, say it ain’t so….
I am incandescent with rage due to the manner in which half the England squad seems to have gone down injured T-5 days ahead of the tournament.
In my day, multiple injuries would have been incurred undertaking traditional pre-cricket-tournament activities, such as touch rugby, five-a-side football, mud-wrestling, pedalo racing, bungee-jumping or sky-diving.
This current bunch of clowns have been risking limb and digit through the reckless expedient of playing cricket to warm up for a cricket tournament.
It just all seems to be going horribly wrong, horribly early.
Here’s the story of my sorry day when it all went horribly wrong the first time around:
http://ianlouisharris.com/1975/06/18/a-truly-thrice-awful-day-in-my-school-sporting-life-18-june-1975/
Returning to 2019 though – perhaps we are simply making sure that England don’t peak too early and/or lulling our opponents into delusions of adequacy.