< 1 minute read It’s not that we’ve got nothing to say ahead of the Kolkata Test, it’s that we’ve already previewed the match. You want more than that? You want something timely? Okay, how about whether Steven Finn should play? We’d say that if he’s fit, he should play, because Stuart Broad seems
Continue reading< 1 minute read Australia were probably down to their third-string attack in the third Test. We’re not sure how deep ‘bench strength’ needs to be these days, but they might want to stay shallower next time they play. This bowling attack was Australia’s choice, but Mitchell Johnson is basically a bowling machine set
Continue reading< 1 minute read A couple of days ago, we wrote about the slow erosion of a Test team over the course of a series. This is part of the game, but at what point does it become too pronounced? Australia have omitted their two main pace bowlers for the third and final Test
Continue reading3 minute read Take a look at this face. Tell us you don’t instantly hate that face. You could pretty accurately track the progress of Ricky Ponting’s career by our opinion of his face at various points in time. It started badly. He made his first Test hundred in his first Ashes innings
Continue reading2 minute read The modern Test series is more about endurance than ever before. It may feature fewer matches, but with little pause between them, it is more like one ongoing slog than a sequence of distinct skirmishes. We’ll see this vividly in the third and decisive Test between Australia and South Africa
Continue reading< 1 minute read Regardless of the outcome of the rest of the series, we’re inclined to say this was one of the most impressive England wins we’ve seen. It’s not just that it’s an England win in India – which is as rare as a sighting of a wendigo – it’s that they
Continue reading< 1 minute read People can overcomplicate things sometimes. Pyramid tea bags? You can make a perfect cup of tea with an ordinary bag, so this is not a worthwhile development. Okay, maybe that’s not precisely the right analogy here. We do accept that there is something in the Monty Panesar has played one
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< 1 minute read A run doesn’t have a set value. Instead, its value changes from one match to the next and arguably even fluctuates over the course of a single match. This is why it’s important not to pay too much attention to averages. In Tests, the value of a run is defined
Continue reading< 1 minute read We could have gone with “Monty Panesar’s back“, but we’ve actually done that joke about him twice before. You have to draw the line somewhere. We fully expect you all to now tell us that we’ve drawn that line incorrectly. But let’s not bicker about whether a joke should be
Continue reading< 1 minute read Okay, we get it – you’re amazing at batting. It’s getting a bit old now. This wasn’t Michael Clarke’s first double hundred of the year. It wasn’t even his first double hundred of the year in Adelaide; it was his second, and he has four of the buggers in total.
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