2 minute readFor a while it seemed as if no-one would make it all the way – even if it had felt inevitable that several of them would get halfway. Trott was out for 59, Cook for 76 and then Ballance for 77. They were creeping closer and it was Root who
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Is Alastair Cook a plodder? How long does it take to diagnose ploditis?
3 minute readAlastair Cook says that he’s doing everything he possibly can to try and turn his form around. This begs a rather obvious question. If you’re practising really, really hard and doing everything you possibly can to prepare, but you’re still not scoring runs – what does that actually say about
Continue readingMuralimania and English cricket’s monomania
2 minute readToday we’re going to direct you towards two pieces of ours which appeared outside the kingdom. First up, our latest King of Cricket is Murali. Don’t worry, it ain’t all numbers. It’s about the joints, the graft and the batting really. Secondly, last week’s Cricinfo piece, entitled English cricket rocked
Continue readingAlastair Cook attempts to beat wall down with head
2 minute readOne of Alastair Cook’s problems is that he plays every one-day innings as if it might be his last. He positively clings to the crease, grimly trying not to make a mistake. The better approach might be to play as if he doesn’t give a toss, but say what you
Continue readingAlastair Cook, James Taylor, some other guy and uncooked spaghetti
2 minute readIt’s hard to argue that this wasn’t the perfect England one-day performance. One, England won, which satisfied most of their fans; and two, there was enough evidence to suggest that England will never win one-day games with Alastair Cook at the helm, which will have satisfied his detractors. The ideal
Continue readingAre you right about Alastair Cook?
2 minute readWe used to moan about winter. Winter didn’t give a shit. In fact winter didn’t even know we were there because it was night-time. It’s always night-time in winter. That’s the main thing we used to moan about. After about 15 years of raging against the tilt of the Earth,
Continue readingAlastair Cook’s sticking around for another brandy
< 1 minute read“Oh, you’re still here. I, er, thought everyone had gone home. Are you going to, er…? No, you’re not. You’re going to stick around for a bit longer, you say. You’re going to stick around and have another brandy, even though everyone else has gone home and I was clearly
Continue readingFour bowlers, five runs and one Gary Ballance
2 minute readAfter winning the previous Test with four-and-a-bit bowlers, India could have gone either way for this one. Unsurprisingly, they went with four bowlers, not five. Sometimes you can determine a lot from these fifty-fifty calls and MS Dhoni does seem to be a bit of a ‘pick the extra batsman’
Continue readingAlastair Cook should stick to the day job
2 minute readCaptaincy is an odd thing. It always strikes us that becoming captain is like being a writer promoted to a management position. We’ve had jobs where a senior colleague with a stupid job title has come up to us and basically said: “Your writing and editing is so good that
Continue readingAlastair Cook failed to ration his runs
< 1 minute readVirat Kohli’s due a score, isn’t he? And how many runs has Alastair Cook got in his bag, just waiting to be plucked out? Or is it more that Cook’s now suffering the inevitable consequences of frittering runs away earlier in his career. There was a complete lack of rationing
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