AuthorBilly Crawford

The author Mark Twain famously declared, “rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated”. The same could be said for Test cricket, which, in recent months, has risen from its sickbed to stick two fingers up at the many pundits and scribes who have pronounced its days to be terminally numbered. The driving force behind this has been the country which has brought so much joy to the game of cricket, New Zealand. The Black Caps victory after following on against England at the Basin Reserve in...

Here are TFT’s annual awards courtesy of Billy Crawford. Happy New Year to all… Hero of the year – Ben Stokes Has anyone in the history of cricket ever had such a transformative effect on the game as Benjamin Stokes has wrought in the last 12 months? If so, it is hard to think of one. In June, the Durham man, along with coach Brendan McCullum, took on an England team which had won 1 of its last 17 Tests and was beginning to make the shambles of the 1999s look like the glory years of...

By now we have all had time to digest Sir Andrew Strauss’s High Performance Review into the state of English cricket. For many of us it has left a sour taste in the mouth. The reduction of Championship games, the seeming untouchability of the Hundred and the general distain for the county teams makes it hard to swallow. Strauss didn’t help himself this month by referring to the county game as “one man and his dog” live on Sky Sports. If you are going to conduct a supposedly impartial review...