The perfect yorker is maybe cricket’s coolest delivery. The batter is left helpless as either their toes are crunched, or their stumps are clattered. When done right, little can stand in its way. As such, it has become something of a death bowling staple in white ball cricket. When a chase gets tight, teams look to their bowler to nail some yorkers. The problem is what comes when they go wrong. Indeed, the yorker quickly becomes the most expensive delivery in a bowler’s arsenal. Yorkers On a...
This year’s abandoned IPL involved a familiar procession at the toss. Meet in the middle, make your call, win the toss, bowl first (unless your name is Rohit Sharma in Chennai). It’s a well-rehearsed act in T20 cricket, almost automatic at this point. So established is the urge to chase that it takes little imagination to guess what the winning captain will politely opt for. With this familiarity, one would expect a matching level of competence. Surely, teams are so used to chasing scores...
Today Daniel Booth looks at how England’s young players got on during the first Test in Galle. Who’s trending upwards and who’s trending in the wrong direction? Infront of the keen crowd of one man on a hill, and several sleep-deprived fans back home, England took a 1-0 lead in a two Test series against Sri Lanka. In what will largely be remembered as the Test where Joe Root hit a whopping 228, there was another interesting story to follow – that of England’s young...
Today new writer Dan Booth, from the TopBinsBlog, looks at the options behind Adil Rashid in England’s T20 line-up. Is the cupboard really that bare? In eleven months’ time, the England cricket team will arrive in India for the T20 World Cup. The aim? To go one better than 2016 and bring home a second limited-overs World Cup within just over two years. However, the chance of doing this may rest upon addressing their big issue – spin bowling depth. Adil Rashid is a star in the...
