7 minute read Don Bradman famously averaged 99.94 in Test cricket – but did you know he had a hot streak? Between his second and penultimate Tests, The Don averaged 104.13. We’re being facetious, but you get our point: there are many ebbs and flows in a Test career and sometimes when we
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The 2013 Ridiculous Ashes
2 minute read We do a podcast with Dan Liebke in which we revisit the funnier moments of historic Ashes series. It’s called The Ridiculous Ashes and the latest series, focusing on England’s memorable 2013 win, is now underway. Have a listen! (Or don’t, if you’re busy. It’s not going to be significantly
Continue reading12 England things that happened in the summer of 2022 – maybe they tell a story of some kind (or maybe they don’t)
6 minute read We did this last year, reasoning that a collage of moments from England’s home season might somehow paint a broader picture of where they stand right now. It feels like it does a little bit – but then who knows what’ll come next. New dawns are widely regarded as immaculately
Continue readingHow popular are all these Not-Quite-The-IPL franchise leagues actually likely to be?
2 minute read The birth of a whole new wave of T20 franchise competitions will bring about the death of international cricket according to every single article we’ve read in the last week or so. We don’t really know about that. We are pretty certain that they’ll bring about the death of several
Continue readingWhere are Jason Roy’s foundations? Do white ball specialists need more time in the middle?
5 minute read Jason Roy isn’t at his best. He’s not even in a place where he can try and bat at his best. How can a white ball specialist like him get back into good batting form these days? Let’s start in the obvious place with a story about a speed skater.
Continue readingEoin Morgan – the captain who ignored everyone and gave England ambition
8 minute read England were a one-day team who didn’t know how to top 300 – didn’t even dare to try. Eoin Morgan turned them into the best flat track batting side there’s ever been. It’s worth taking stock of the scale of that transformation and the conviction of the captain who achieved
Continue readingWhat Jonny Bairstow’s Kingsman church scene innings tells us about the ‘throwing off the shackles’ cliché
5 minute read Violence is great, isn’t it? Violence is so much fun. We greatly enjoyed Jonny Bairstow, at Trent Bridge, with a cricket bat. At tea on day five, England were 139-4, 160 runs from victory and Jonny Bairstow was on 43 off 48 balls, which is quick, but still within the
Continue readingFive Test wicketkeepers who quite often didn’t actually do any wicketkeeping
6 minute read If you want to be highly regarded as a wicketkeeper-batter, one of the smartest things you can do is not actually keep wicket in a whole load of Test matches. At what point do you become a wicketkeeper? How frequently do you have to don pads and gloves and chunter
Continue readingThis is the way the county cricket season begins, not with a bang – and we’re happy with that
4 minute read Not every tournament needs an opening ceremony. We’ll let you in on a secret. We are not a fast waker-upper. Our daughter sometimes wanders into our room at an unconscionable hour and announces, “it’s morning,” in an indignant tone. It is impossible for us to convey the full horror of
Continue readingSeparate teams? What might a world of cricket format specialists actually look like?
9 minute read Way, way back in 2006, in our first year of writing this website, we described the international fixture list as being fatter than a TV-loving, chip-munching hippo with an abnormally slow metabolism. We probably should have left ourself with more room for manoeuvre because where does that leave us now?
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