2 minute readJonathan Trott’s guard-marking routine is infamous. He has a series of things he NEEDS to do before he’s happy to face a delivery. Morne Morkel’s turn at the start of his run-up is less well-known, but is seemingly just as deeply ingrained. It seems he can’t run into bowl without
Continue reading< 1 minute readSouth Africa looked so vulnerable against right-arm fast-medium bowlers during the first Test that England have added a fourth. Our feelings on this are well-known. You should always play a spinner. It’s not just about having a specialist should the pitch offer significant turn later in the match (although that’s
Continue reading< 1 minute readYou wait and wait for a drawing of the diminutive James Taylor batting with gangletastic Will Jefferson and then you get two in two days. Angy was responsible for this one: Hope everyone’s starting to get a decent sense of just how small James Taylor is. Sorry if it’s still
Continue reading< 1 minute readHe’s about three-foot-one, three-foot-two maybe. There’s a very striking photo of James Taylor when he was batting with the grossly oversized Will Jefferson once. Sam sent it to us asking us to publish it. We said we couldn’t because of all that copyright stuff that no-one pays attention to when
Continue reading< 1 minute readLet’s ask England coach, Andy Flower: “In international sport you’ll have huge ups and downs and our make-up has to deal with those ups and downs.” So there you go. No plans for success. Just waterproof mascara to deal with the effects of defeat.
Continue reading< 1 minute readGood day to you all. Count Cricket here. Apologies for my absence, but certain developments have led to my spending several weeks indoors. Frustrating, but unavoidable. Fortunately, I did manage to read the newspaper during this unscheduled ‘downtime’ and have kept tabs on County Championship developments. I can basically sum
Continue reading< 1 minute readRavi Bopara’s found another way of missing out on a Test match. We don’t know what it is, but it’s led to England selecting James Taylor in his place. We really don’t understand this. Taylor plays the kind of innings where everyone coos about his ‘class’ and says how it
Continue reading3 minute readNe writes: We had arranged to meet at Marylebone station, in order to get the Chilterns Railways line up to Birmingham. This route had many advantages: firstly, on the day tickets are significantly cheaper than those offered by Virgin at Euston; secondly, the train nerd in APB (my travelling companion)
Continue reading< 1 minute readWe’re not a fan of batting. Fours and sixes elicit an approving nod of the head, but they don’t move us in the same way as wickets. This has perhaps been compounded by a period of Test cricket that lasted until recently in which huge scores became the norm. That
Continue reading2 minute readIs there a real lack of perspective these days, or is it just that the internet has provided an outlet for people who never had it? Before the first Test, some people were talking up Vernon Philander as being the main threat to England’s batsmen and after the first day,
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