3 minute read A 3-1 defeat in Australia is no catastrophe really, but that isn’t to say India didn’t experience catastrophic moments. In fact looking back, it could have been a real horror show if it weren’t for Jasprit Bumrah. At times like this, we tend to wonder how the captain will respond – except in this case the captain became a living, breathing catastrophic moment and dropped himself. All
4 minute read We can’t tell you how much of our life we’ve sunk into looking at Test match scorecards, thinking about them a bit and then talking to people about what’s been going on in those games. This colossal time investment in one of our greatest passions has been almost infinitely less valuable to international cricket than someone sticking the Big Bash on as background TV for half an
2 minute read No idea why artificial intelligence saw fit to make our Festivus cricket image so UK-centric, but who are we – a mere human – to question its wisdom. It’s trawled through and exploited far more intellectual property than we ever will. To very quickly bring you up to speed on the purpose of this annual page: We can’t really be bothered writing anything at this time of
2 minute read New Zealand dropped an honestly comical number of chances on day two of the first Test – most of them from Harry Brook. Tom Latham’s at slip was our favourite. Friend of this website, Dr The Scientician was once outside a busy university library when there was a fire drill. As countless people responded to the deafening alarm by pouring out of the building, he spotted one
2 minute read We don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway. Ben Stokes lauded Jacob Bethell’s ‘swagger’ after his Test debut. It’s a characteristic that can mark you out as something of a tool in everyday life – but Test cricket is not everyday life. While confidence alone won’t carry you far, its absence can undermine even the most talented. This
2 minute read James Anderson had a great many attributes as a Test cricketer – none bigger than his ability to serve as a majestic island of chuntering irritation and sadness when England lost a Test match by a single run. England are in Wellington again. Bloody Wellington. To recap what happened last time, England batted first and fell to 21-2, at which point Joe Root made a hundred, only
2 minute read “I hear you’re a middle order batter now, Rohit. How did you get interested in that type of thing?” Before this Australia-India series, we reported how failing failure Steve Smith was going to hide down the order following his abject failure as a Test opener. The move has gone really, really well for him with a rate of improvement from one innings to the next that has
6 minute read Brooks aren’t ordinarily associated with peaks – they tend to run beneath them – but Harry Brook might already be at one. We’ll tell you what stops a brook in its tracks though: a dam – or perhaps in this case, the giving of damns. You may or may not have been fully cognisant of our wincing when we reported that Jacob Bethell was being described as
3 minute read Back in the mists of time, whenever the digital rights for Test matches were last agreed, someone decided that the free YouTube highlights for a day’s play should be just 10 minutes long. That was when a day’s play was a fifth of a Test match though. Surely now they could be at least a quarter of an hour? This is modern cricket. You don’t get many
2 minute read This is the way careers are supposed to end: messily and unsatisfactorily. No wicket with your final ball and six with your final shot. No nonsense exhibition match seemingly played solely for your benefit. Tim Southee has a chance here to lessen the grief for his team-mates and countryfolk by making it abundantly clear that, yes, it definitely is time for a new opening bowler. Tim Southee
