2 minute read We believe every international cricket team should be issued with at least one superhero. It keeps things interesting. In the years leading up to the creation of this website, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the standard of Test cricket was pretty variable. There were – as there always are
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Number one Test team finally leaves home
2 minute read According to the rankings, Australia are the number one men’s Test team. They also have the number one batter (Marnus Labuschagne) and number one bowler (Pat Cummins). They’ve achieved this without playing a single match away from home since 2019. Now Australia are in Pakistan of all places. Pakistan, where
Continue readingWith less than a year to go, let’s look at who’s finding form for the T20 World Cup
2 minute read It’s now less than a year until the final of the 2022 T20 World Cup. Let’s take a look at how some of the teams are shaping up with just a handful of matches left for fine-tuning. The world is unanimously agreed that the 2022 edition will be the first
Continue readingMatthew Hayden v Justin Langer – what will it be like?
2 minute read “It will be like two balls of mercury on the one plate,” according to Matthew Hayden. Regular readers of this website will know that Hayden is currently serving as Pakistan’s batting coach and principle guff-talker. Justin Langer is of course Australia’s current head coach and principle guff-talker. Way back when,
Continue readingMatthew Hayden’s extra words
2 minute read One of the defining qualities of Matthew Hayden’s guff-talking is his habit of throwing in a load of additional words that add precisely nothing to what he is trying to say. We’re going to talk to you about three recent examples. Last time around – back when Hayden first took
Continue readingEasy-to-cancel tours and the mindless narrowing of cricket’s horizons
3 minute read It’s always been the case that some tours have been easier to cancel than others. Assorted pressures mean cancellations are coming thicker and faster at the minute. What are the implications of this? Earlier this month, we wrote that the threshold for binning the Old Trafford Test was lower than
Continue readingPakistan’s poor batters are going to have to listen to Matthew Hayden speak
3 minute read Matthew Hayden will be working as a batting consultant for Pakistan at the T20 World Cup in the UAE next month. Matthew Hayden is a man we used to write about very often. Now, against our better judgement, we’re about to write about him again. Some time in 2006, we
Continue readingWhy Liam Livingstone’s huge six v Pakistan was just about the most satisfying shot ever played and also why it was not
2 minute read In a world where every shot that drops just over the rope is MASSIVE and the ones that get caught by spectators sitting in the first row are OUT OF THE GROUND, it becomes quite hard to properly acknowledge the shot played by Liam Livingstone off Pakistan’s Haris Rauf at
Continue readingEngland’s squad for the Pakistan ODIs doesn’t look *that* weird
2 minute read England have binned an entire one-day international squad and picked a different one. You’d think that might have resulted in some barrel-scraping. But it hasn’t really. Cannon Fodder was the first videogame we can remember that featured near-constant character turnover. It was right there in the name. Jools would get
Continue readingThree great bowlers’ run-ups – but do you have a favourite?
9 minute read Can we talk about bowlers’ run-ups? We’ve picked out three great ones. They’re not necessarily our favourites, but we feel like each one says something in particular about how bowlers get to the crease and what we as viewers feel as they’re doing so. But before that, please can we
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