You could argue that they (the bowlers) probably don’t last long enough at the crease (and don’t need to either).

‘Ah, the Guardian! The newspaper that hates other newspapers.’ I’ve been trying to work ‘the thick of it’ in it, but to no avail.

Gosh bless the comments section and all those who comment within it.

Superb. Thanks for sharing. The best quote (of many) therein, for me, is:

“…five days rarely happens in practice. But the entire tone and texture of the game flows backwards from its possibility.”

Tough on the bowlers who could ‘make it’ without having any kind of batting technique whatsoever.

You could argue that back in the pre-helmet days, you needed a better technique to cut it as a batsman. If you weren’t good enough, you would get hit at school level, where it would probably hurt, but the bowling wouldn’t be fast enough to kill you. At that point you either improved or stopped playing. Don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

Also I live in a dry state in India. It hurts. Every single day, it hurts. It hurts so bad.

Don’t believe the Dutch board have any ambition re Test cricket as they don’t see that there would be audience / commercial appetite for it, and it wouldn’t serve as a way of growing the game there. Though they did do okay in the four-day ICC Intercontinental Cup, coming 3rd (behind Afg and Ire) in what seems to have been its final edition.

I’d like to see the Intercontinental Cup revived, though would suggest there’s little virtue dressing it up as “four-day Test cricket” since the quality of most matches is clearly below that standard. Four-day first-class matches targeted for the countries that have the capacity to commercialise it and aspirations to full ICC membership in the long run is something that’s missing in the ICC programme at the moment though, and I don’t think it would hurt for Afg and Ire to play some matches against countries in the tier below them – their schedules aren’t packed out at the moment, and it would give the likes of Nepal a sighter for where they’ve got to get to (and the ICC a much clearer idea of how competitive they are). Without the Intercontinental Cup or a replacement there’s sadly no development route to Test cricket. Moreover, the new ICC membership criteria have effectively delinked full membership with Test status, which is a concession that the growth of the professional game in new countries may bypass Test cricket altogether!

I googled to see if knobhead was a particularly Mancunian word. Although, there’s a ‘Knobhead’ peak in Antarctica, one word.

Knob’ead deffo one word.