< 1 minute read Giles Clarke says England fans shouldn’t boo Ricky Ponting. He thinks it shows a lack of respect for a great batsman. He thinks it’s offensive. Well, you can happily discard Giles Clarke and his comments. Giles Clarke likes being photographed next to a big box of money. Not only that,
Continue reading< 1 minute read Technically all the players’ injuries are unrelated to playing back to back Tests, because they’ve not actually played the second one yet. We don’t care. We’re blaming the scheduling because we hate back to back Tests. There’s also the fact that for half this match, people will be saying ‘back
Continue reading2 minute read Ged writes: Daisy was feeling a bit poorly the night before and was expressing the sort of indifference towards the outing one would normally expect from cats. I gently explained that this pair of tickets were the hottest items in town and that I was a mere 30 seconds away
Continue reading< 1 minute read People thinking second division cricket is just as first-class as first division cricket have bothered us in the past, but now that this view can be exploited, we don’t care quite so much. ‘Not really caring’ is a state we can slip into pretty much at will. Rob Key‘s last
Continue reading< 1 minute read The BBC go with: Cool Laxman steers Lancs to win Which is fair enough. Laxman did hit 38 not out off 37 balls to get Lancashire home. However, he was dropped twice and had a relatively easy task as Tom Smith hit 43 off 28 balls. This is what happens
Continue reading< 1 minute read England’s selectors have sprung a slight surprise in picking Warwickshire’s Jonathan Trott. We’ll say two things: Trott has scored a lorryload of runs on a pretty flat Edgbaston pitch (Jeetan Patel and Rikki Clarke have hit hundreds there this year). Test cricket is played on pretty flat pitches these days.
Continue reading< 1 minute read This seems to be Peter Siddle’s greatest strength in the eyes of his team mates. When asked about their bowling attack, Australian players refer to Johnson’s speed, Hilfenhaus’s swing, Clark’s control and Siddle’s ability to run in all day. You don’t want bowlers to run in all day. You want
Continue reading< 1 minute read We’d say they gave readings about 3mph more than other cricket speed guns. That’s based on years of watching Andrew Flintoff and James Anderson and pretty much knowing their bowling speeds by now. How should we react to this? We should all try and make the effort to be 3mph
Continue reading< 1 minute read Cardiff and Lord’s hosted great Test matches, but the Ashes has really got going at Edgbaston. It’s the crowd. We went on Saturday and much as we love eating sandwiches in the rain, Sunday showed what we missed. It clearly affects the players who were suddenly all very interested in
Continue reading< 1 minute read During his appearances on Test Match Special, Matthew Hayden has rather surprisingly revealed a hitherto concealed ability to talk sense. More reassuringly, he’s also been showcasing his nonsense, which is what we’re more interested in. No-one talks meaningless bollocks quite like Matthew Hayden. Consider the following examples – all from
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