6 minute readThere aren’t many things in cricket more entertaining than a duck. A batter slowly walks out to try and make some runs and then slowly walks back again having failed to do so. It’s a miniature tragedy. Great ducks come in many different flavours. There’s the duck you were expecting
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8 minute readThere have been 28 occasions in the last 25 years when a bowler has taken eight wickets or more in a Test innings. Some of these were weirder than others. At what point does a bowling performance become really, truly, freakishly remarkable? We’d say at the seventh wicket. Five-fors are
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8 minute readIn 1998 Muttiah Muralitharan took 16 wickets in a Test match against England at the Oval. But honestly that isn’t even the half of it. Only one person has taken 800 Test wickets and it’s easy to think that’s what makes Muttiah Muralitharan unique. But we need to take a
Continue reading< 1 minute readWe could write about Mitchell Johnson’s Test retirement. We could write about some actual cricket. Or we could publish some tweets in which Sourav Ganguly looks frighteningly sickly. Hey Sourav, do an impression of a zombie. Top drawer. Now do an impression of a ghost. Not bad. Note Murali’s T-shirt
Continue reading2 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 reading2 minute readYounus Khan’s just made his third Test hundred on the bounce. We mentioned that he was underrated after the first one. Let’s revisit that. We all know Younus averages some way north of 50 and that he’s now made Test hundreds against every nation, but let’s dig a little deeper.
Continue reading< 1 minute readWe wrote about the various World Cup storylines during the quarter-finals. The stories of Tendulkar and Murali, two ageing greats, seem to be the strongest now, but that’s mostly due to hindsight. All the same, it makes for a good narrative. There’s also a minor subplot that no-one will care
Continue reading< 1 minute readWe don’t get it. It was only Pragyan Ojha. What’s the big deal? If we’d taken 800 Test wickets, we wouldn’t be jumping up and down about getting Pragyan Ojha out. We’d have been more worked up about dismissing better batsmen, like Ian Salisbury or Chris Lewis.
Continue reading< 1 minute readWe’re certainly intending to do a proper Muralitharan retirement post – possibly after his last match – but for now, we can’t be bothered. These are the things that immediately came to mind when we heard he was retiring: Muttiah Muralitharan might just surpass Steve Harmison in our estimation as
Continue reading< 1 minute readMurali’s always had a certain approach to batting. Have a ruddy great swing at the ball Miss Have an even bigger swing at the next one Usually this method fails for reasons that are fairly clear even to Murali. Occasionally it doesn’t and he hits 33 off 16 balls to
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