< 1 minute readA lot. It seems to be his default facial expression while batting. It’s a little disconcerting. But on the plus side, we’ve already started thinking to ourself: “At least Ballance is still in,” as if he’s the most reliable of the England batsmen. Like Jonathan Trott, you don’t really feel
Continue reading2 minute readOkay, turns out we do have something else to say. It’s to do with who’s a good batsman. We don’t want this to become a Suresh Raina bashing thing, because we’ve a certain amount of time for him. He does certain things better than almost anyone. The issue is that
Continue reading< 1 minute readFor the second time this series, we find ourself looking for an old article of ours about an Indian batsman only to find that we never actually wrote it. As far back as 2012, we were casually referring to Ajinkya Rahane in a matter of fact way, as if you
Continue reading2 minute readMop-up of the day was something that happened at our last office job. It involved new starters finishing each day in their first week talking with the girls in HR. The company didn’t tend to hang onto staff for more than a week or two, so mop-up of the day
Continue reading< 1 minute readMost people’s knowledge of Simon Kerrigan’s bowling amounts to eight overs on his debut. That’s not a huge amount to go off and those overs too in circumstances that can be considered exceptional and therefore perhaps not properly representative of his ability. On the other hand, he still has to
Continue reading< 1 minute readFor a very short while on the final day, it seemed like things could potentially maybe be sort of in the balance a little bit if a few more things went England’s way, but then it very much wasn’t in the balance and the day climaxed with Alastair Cook’s round-arm
Continue reading< 1 minute readThis England team isn’t the most popular, but you can’t fault Jimmy Anderson for that. He’s waging a one-man willow-wielding war on unpopularity this summer. You wouldn’t think it possible to improve on his efforts against Sri Lanka, but at Trent Bridge, against India, he may well have managed it.
Continue reading< 1 minute readWe were at the Test yesterday. It was… steady. Or at least it was until Stuart Broad came in. The main thing we gleaned from our side-on vantage point is that Ishant Sharma has two different running styles during his approach to the crease. First, he jogs normally. Then, halfway
Continue reading2 minute readThis starts off as a Twitter story, but stick with it because that’s merely the setting. The point we’re about to make has nothing to do with that. Firstly, let us just say that we don’t make predictions on Twitter. No-one really cares what we think and it’s too easy
Continue reading< 1 minute readThere’s been a fair amount of whinging about the slowness and lowness of the pitch – and not without cause – but it strikes us that really good bowling attacks don’t happen across dead pitches very often. England’s is not a really good bowling attack. The point of Test cricket
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