2 minute read It’s good to be ambitious and open minded and not hidebound by the past. It’s maybe not quite so smart to talk about how you’re going to rewrite how Test cricket is played – particularly if you’re England. Ben Stokes has mostly spoken well since he took on the captaincy,
Continue readingTag: Ben Stokes
Ben Stokes is managing
2 minute read ‘Managing’ means two things. It means taking decisions and directing matters so that everything hopefully progresses more smoothly. It also means bumbling through in the face of various problems in the vague hope you’ll just get through it all somehow. Tired of the second approach, Ben Stokes has switched to
Continue readingBen Stokes’ England are so far beating their greatest enemy – second-guessing themselves
4 minute read “It’s a game of failure, batting,” said Joe Root five minutes after this Test finished. The statement was on the one hand very sage and on the other just plain wrong. Four times in a row England have chased a lot of runs to win. This would be remarkable even
Continue readingStokes and McCullum have the Jack Leach they created
2 minute read If you’re attentive and possessed of a decent memory, you’ll clock that the headline above is a very obvious reference to our December article, Root and Silverwood have the Jack Leach they created. There’s a contrast in man management here and if you read that article again, you’ll easily see
Continue readingCaptain Stokes v Captain Root
3 minute read Everything’s amazing and fun and positive under the new England captain. Remember that previous guy? Man was he a miserable arsehole. Didn’t have a clue, did he? Whatever happened to him? Sometimes you accidentally reveal something about the past. We remember being on this cookery course in Thailand once with
Continue readingYou see what happens? You see what happens? This is what happens when you give Ben Stokes the England Test captaincy and then invite him to return to action in the County Championship
2 minute read Ben Stokes played his third Championship innings for Durham in four years today. He made 161 off 88 balls. It took him 64 balls to reach three figures. Stokes brought up his hundred with what was his fifth six in five balls. The sixth ball of the over went for
Continue readingBen Stokes to vie with Eoin Morgan for use of Ben Stokes
3 minute read We very much hate announcements of announcements. You know – when they announce that an announcement is going to be made and also exactly what that announcement will be. Hopefully by the time you read this Ben Stokes will have officially been announced as England Test captain and we can
Continue readingFive bonkers moments from the 2019 Cricket World Cup final – but which was the most uniquely cricket?
6 minute read 2019 Cricket World Cup final, England v New Zealand Cricket is at its very purest and best when it’s completely village; when the bowlers are batting and people are being run-out and everyone has to keep checking the laws and playing regulations because they don’t have the faintest idea what’s
Continue readingEngland’s eight most surprising double hundreds since Graham Gooch’s 333
9 minute read Graham Gooch’s 333 against India at Lord’s in 1990 was the first eye-wateringly big innings we can remember. The idea that one guy could score that many runs on his own in a Test match recalibrated what we thought was possible. There have only really been a handful of oversized
Continue readingWhat Ben Stokes, Jack Leach and Headingley 2019 tell us about Test cricket
5 minute read England v Australia, third Test, day four It’s six or out… … It’s six! Jonathan Agnew, Test Match Special Have you seen No Country For Old Men? You should watch No Country For Old Men. No Country For Old Men is a striking and excellent film and while the ending
Continue reading