Betcha it can.

It stretched a remarkable run of records Moeen is accumulating in recent times: already one of just three men to score 1,000 Test runs and take 30 Test wickets in a calendar year (Ian Botham and Jacques Kallis are the other two) after a strong 2016, he recently reached the milestone of 100 wickets and 2,000 runs quicker than Garry Sobers, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev, Botham et al, gained a place on the honours board at Lord’s denied the great Shane Warne and returned the best figures by an England offspinner at Trent Bridge since 1956. It can’t keep being dismissed as an aberration, can it?

Sept Blatters?

The memory tends to go as you get older Sam, it must be even worse when you’re dead, so perhaps you died and have just forgotten?

“I’m still of the view we don’t need more than seven batters,” Bayliss told Sky Sports after the game at The Oval.

Is he going into the bakery business then? This is batter afaik:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/de/d2/8b/ded28b1c5a873c6a935234f50413656e–batter-recipe-berry-cobbler.jpg

Excellent point, DC.

I was born soon after test 534 was completed and turned 32 during test 1267:

733 test matches in 32 years yielding 3 test hat tricks. On average a hat trick once every 244 matches.

Moen’s hat trick was in test 2266:

999 test matches in fewer than 23 years yielding 24 hat tricks. On average a hat trick every 41 or 42 matches.

I took my own little personal hat trick just before the start of test no 760. There had been no test hat tricks during my life at that point, although there had been 225 test matches.

Perhaps one should normalize that with the number of matches played in those periods rather than the time. Still, that’s an interesting bit of trivia.

Since a decent proportion of batters are left-handed the unique “all-leftie” stat astonishes me.

If the Old Trafford pitch is anything like the turgid, glued-together sandpit I witnessed last September, playing four seamers and two spinners is not as daft an idea as it sounds.

My problem is the choice of “first spinner”, but that seems to have been sealed for the remainder of this series.

Have I ever mentioned that I once took a hat trick with sort-of off-spin, btw?

http://ianlouisharris.com/1975/07/09/the-day-i-took-a-hat-trick-at-cricket-alleyns-school-9-july-1975/

I don’t talk about it much.

I’m surprised he hasn’t mooted Hales as coming back into the opener’s spot. Would make about as much sense, and we’d get hilarious bowling into the bargain.