The other day I reached up to the top of my bookshelf and brought down a large yellow book The book was The Essential Wisden, a collection of essays and match reports from 140 years of our game. I did this to remind myself why I love cricket for there has been precious little in the sport lately to love. The Yorkshire racism scandal, Tom Harrison and the ECB board’s massive bonuses, the divisive arguments about the Hundred; these are just a few of the many things...
“Climb for it, you f***ing monkey”. Those words should send a chill down the spine of anyone who loves our game. They were uttered by an as yet unnamed Essex cricketer as he threw a banana down the stairs at Maurice Chambers, a man of Caribbean decent who played for the county between 2005-2013. Chambers alleges he was routinely offered bananas and subjected to racist abuse during his time at Essex. He added that he would go home at night and cry in his room. Azeem...
Last Wednesday I went to the dentist. On the same day, The Hundred started. Why are these two events related? Well, I approached both of them with a sense of complete dread. I loath dental visits with a passion and to regular readers of this website my feelings on the Hundred are no secret. After both events I experienced the same feeling, that of pleasant surprise that the event had not been as awful as I imagined it would be. In fact it had been quite tolerable, but it was still not something...
Last week I had the privilege of attending a live County Championship game for the first time in nearly two years. Northamptonshire’s Wantage Road ground looked positively picturesque and the gentle hum of spectators was as tranquil as it had ever been before these dark last 18 months. I was also able to witness a young English spinner bowling with guile, control and generally giving a wonderful exhibition of his craft, ending up with 7 first innings wickets. The name of this young bowler? Dom...
Remember the term ‘fortress Edgbaston’? Well, the best way to undermine a stronghold is to chip away at its foundations until the whole thing collapses. Billy Crawford gets to the root of the problem … Cast your mind back 16 years to September 13th, 2005. Thousands upon thousands of people lined Oxford Street and crammed into Trafalgar Square to greet the England cricket team. Such was the clamour for the national summer game that 20,000 people had been turned away from Old...
Yesterday should have been the proudest moment of Ollie Robinson’s life. He had made his Test debut for England and taken his first test match wickets. His day ended slightly differently than he might have expected, however. After racist and offensive tweets made by Robinson as an 18-year-old emerged, he was placed in front of the TV cameras, clearly a broken man, while the great and the good of English cricket lined up to condemn him. The ECB chief executive Tom Harrison was harshest. “I do...
