4 minute readThis article was first published on the All Out Cricket website in May 2015, but the All Out Cricket website no longer exists so we’re republishing it here. Jonathan Trott was never a cash-in player. He was never the guy who exploited tired bowling. He never stood on anyone else’s
Continue reading< 1 minute readOur proper Jonathan Trott retirement piece is over on All Out Cricket. Other than that, here are two old posts which sum up different aspects of a top, top player. The first focuses on the sheer relentlessness of the man – surely his defining quality. If we have a happier
Continue reading< 1 minute readWe wrote this title in the hope that we’d have some really funny thoughts to share once we started staring at the great expanse of whiteness where the body of the article’s supposed to go. Nothing happened, so we checked Twitter and apparently Graeme Smith’s going to retire. Let this
Continue reading3 minute readBefore we begin, let us just say that we don’t believe in comparing players or ranking them. We’re now going to do precisely that as a kind of academic exercise, primarily to piss off a load of people who will always hold Jacques Kallis in somewhat lower regard than many
Continue reading3 minute readGraeme Swann’s retirement seems somehow emblematic of England’s current state. It sounds like he’s been aware of reduced efficacy for a while now, but could put it to the back of his mind so long as England were winning. Now they’re losing and the ensuing clarity has shunted a memorable
Continue reading3 minute readConsidering he’s been the highest profile player for pretty much the whole time we’ve been following cricket, we’ve missed an awful lot of Sachin Tendulkar’s career. We went to the match in which he scored his first Test century, but we didn’t see him bat. Then, for a long time
Continue reading3 minute readOdd that it should be Simon Jones who’s last man standing from that 2005 Ashes-winning bowling attack. Ashley Giles retired so long ago we wrote about it on a different web domain, Matthew Hoggard retired last month and while we saw Andrew Flintoff in Didsbury yesterday looking fitter than he
Continue reading3 minute readHave you ever been at a funeral where they’ve skipped through the first 80 years of the person’s life before really dwelling on recent history? Half a century of adult life is summed up by counting progeny and then all the eulogy goes on about is how you liked a
Continue reading< 1 minute readWhat happens to Mike Hussey’s nickname now? Can you call someone Mr Cricket if their job is to inspect construction projects to confirm they comply with building regulations? We’re assuming that’s the kind of thing Mike Hussey will do after retiring – something dull that will allow him to be
Continue reading3 minute readTake 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
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