3 minute read “Yes, if it is to be said, so it be, so it is,” as Greg Hirsch would say. Harry Brook has been named England’s T20 and one-day international captain, as we all assumed he would be. So what happens when Ben Stokes gets injured and can’t lead the Test team in, ooh, let’s say THE ASHES? Because we all know that is 100% definitely going to happen.
5 minute read There’s a fundamental tension these days between specialising in one particular format and striving to become a more rounded cricketer. It’s pretty much impossible to walk both paths, but right now Tom Banton appears to have put a good few footprints on each. In the parallel worlds of strength and endurance training, coaches often talk about the relationship between volume, intensity and frequency. Volume is how much
3 minute read We’re about 10 minutes into the county season as we type this sentence and already they’re talking about changing things next year. This is, paradoxically, one of the things that never changes about county cricket: they will forever be talking about changing it. Yesterday we reposted our 2022 article about how the county season starts, “not with a bang.” A key feature of that piece is that
3 minute read All eyes on the Ambassador Cruise Line Ground from tomorrow. Is this funnier or less funny than the previous sponsorship which made it sound like Essex’s nickname was Cloud County? Overseas professionalism is a jaunty, unpredictable thing in the current County Championship era. Remember last year when Surrey went down to the deluxe temp agency and hired Shakib al Hasan for all of one game. A short
2 minute read Charlotte Edwards is England’s all-time leading run-scorer. She played 309 games for the national side, 220 of them as captain. She won five Ashes series and both World Cups. She’s won plenty as a domestic coach as well and at one point they even named a trophy after her. Realistically, there are only so many things left for her to do in cricket, so becoming England head
4 minute read If there’s one thing you can count on with IPL tactical trends, it’s that by the time you’ve written about one, it’s gone back the other way. We can’t really remember any particular period when the perceived value of a wicketkeeper largely hinged on his wicketkeeping though, which is where MS Dhoni seems to find himself these days You may remember a couple of years ago, we
2 minute read Ah, the County Championship, bastion of egalitarian sporting competition, where every county plays every other county home and away… except for four of them. An important thing to look at when previewing the County Championship is which matches won’t actually happen. Ten first division teams, each playing 14 matches – we can see the perfectionists among you wincing at the mathematics of it. But is there not
2 minute read “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Steve Harmison wanging his first ball straight to Andrew Flintoff at second slip. Rory Burns missing his first ball and getting bowled behind his legs. Nasser Hussain electing to bowl and spending a very long day regretting that decision. A Peter Siddle hat trick – on his birthday. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
3 minute read Hassan Nawaz hit Pakistan’s fastest T20 ton today – a 44-ball effort against New Zealand. It was only his third international innings, which brings to mind Shahid Afridi’s absolute nonsense of a hundred the very first time he walked out to bat for the national side. But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that at all. Let’s do a head-to-head to prove it. Entrances The first
2 minute read Every year, 10 to 20 bowlers take 40 wickets or more in the first division of the County Championship and every year, three or four of them are the exact same Hampshire players. This cannot go on. This will not go on. In 2021, in his first year with Hampshire, Mohammad Abbas took 41 wickets at 15.87. That same year, his team-mate Keith Barker took 41 at
