The Old Trafford pitch

Sportsfreak are running a cricket tipping competition about the England v New Zealand series. We are currently equal second out of 12.

For the last Test we used reasoning for precisely one of the questions and got it right. Michael Vaughan has scored bucketloads of runs at Lord’s, so we bet on him to be England’s top scorer. This might lead to the conclusion that ‘thinking’ is the way forward. Or at least it might do if we were using thinking to reach these conclusions. Which we’re not.

For our tips for the Old Trafford Test, we instead waited until we were in a faintly delirious state of mind. We can’t remember most of what we said. We think we may have used thinking at one point though.

The Old Trafford pitch is usually as hard as the thick-skulled inhabitants of our fair town. It’s kind to quick bowlers and spinners, while fast-medium bowlers tend to get carted. In addition to this, we haven’t had rain in these parts for about three weeks, so the surface should be like compressed adamantium right now.

Being as there aren’t really any proper fast bowlers in either team, we’ve tipped Daniel Vettori and Monty Panesar to be the top wicket-takers. If we turn out to be correct about this, we will be forced to embrace reason. If we’re wrong we’ll carry on pretty much like we’ve always done.