2 minute read In 2012, we wrote a piece for Cricinfo about Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s patient wait for a West Indies Test team worthy of his contributions. Little did we know he wasn’t just waiting; he was taking active steps. ‘Taking active steps’ is an interesting euphemism because what we’re saying is that Shiv’s
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Ireland take pity on Shimron Hetmyer
< 1 minute read Imagine missing a World Cup because you literally didn’t manage to get on the plane in time. Imagine how you’d feel about that tournament. You could forgive Shimron Hetmyer for perhaps feeling a smidgeon of relief that Ireland absolutely battered the West Indies today, knocking them out of the tournament.
Continue readingKyle Mayers is playing Brian Lara Cricket properly
2 minute read Kyle Mayers really made an entrance. Since then he’s apparently been training with Codemasters. Short of inexplicably setting off for a run while the wicketkeeper stands at the stumps with the ball in his hands, it’s hard to envisage a more Brian Lara Cricket moment than the six he hit
Continue readingThe day Dad faced (and caught) Roy Gilchrist
2 minute read We sent Special Correspondent Dad some footage of Roy Gilchrist this week because we knew he’d played against him once. If you don’t know Gilchrist, he was summed up in his Guardian obituary as a, “West Indian fast bowler whose temper was even quicker and more fiery than the speed
Continue readingPretty soon someone is going to prise the brush out of Joe Root’s automaton fingers
3 minute read If you needed to sum up England’s latest series defeat in a single quote, you could do a lot worse than Joe Root’s pre-tour comment: “I don’t want this to sound like a development tour at all but…” A friend of ours tells a story about when he did a
Continue readingThat day when a third of the highlights were a 10th wicket partnership
2 minute read It’s probably best to avoid extrapolating from that England innings in a bid to predict the course of this Test match. England went to Grenada and were at various points 53-3, 53-6, 114-9 and 204-9. This all added up to one of the weirdest-arsed scorecards you are ever likely to
Continue readingKraigg Brathwaite does not plan to get out
2 minute read “I had my plan,” said Kraigg Brathwaite after batting for five minutes short of 16 hours against England in the second Test in Bridgetown. “They bowled well, but I stuck with my plan and it paid off.” Whatever Brathwaite’s plan is, getting out doesn’t seem to be a major component.
Continue reading‘Jonny Bairstow, specialist number six’ is working – so that’ll need changing sharpish
2 minute read When we think about Jonny Bairstow and how England have used him over the years, it reminds us of a moment in Airplane! There was a time back in 2019 when England dropped Jonny Bairstow and tried to frame it as a kick up the arse that might potentially drive
Continue readingFive fiendishly difficult questions for England on their West Indies tour
3 minute read England’s tour of the West Indies gets underway on Tuesday with the hotly-anticipated match against TBA. Three Test matches follow during which we may or may not get answers to these five fiendishly difficult questions. (1) Is this a ‘development tour’ or not? Development tour? Who said ‘development tour’? Actually,
Continue reading17 of the best, worst and weirdest cricket moments of 2021
7 minute read Here is a bunch of stuff that happened in 2021. It is not an exhaustive list, because an exhaustive list chronicling the activities of multiple people across an entire year would take far longer than a year to read. It is just a selection of striking cricket moments from the
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