I’m feeling a bit rough today so I’ll keep this short – a bit like England’s innings. I tuned into Sky’s The Debate last night expecting Grumpy Bob and Co to lambast what I thought was another really poor batting display from our ragtag batting line-up. But instead of being critical they basically blamed the pitch. Hmmmm. Yes the pitch in Antigua wasn’t great – a far cry from the roads Andy Roberts used to prepared at the old ground – but was it...
You’ll see two very different questions in the headline above. The first is what England should do. In other words, what changes they should make to their team for Antigua. This involves looking a problem rationally and objectively. The second question asks what England will do. And this is rather complicated because it involves putting oneself in the shoes of the management, who will be feeling embarrassed, a little defensive, and wary of abandoning a selection policy based on packing...
Those of you with young kids might know a cute / irritating cartoon called Paw Patrol. It’s about a band of puppies who solve crimes and generally frustrate the evil machinations of the feline group ‘Cat-astrophe’. One of the puppies is called Chase. And he’s as harmless as wet cotton wool. A bit like Roston Chase’s bowling in fact. The lesson we can learn from Paw Patrol is that you don’t need to be frightening to succeed. You can appear completely innocuous, lack teeth, yet still...
What can you say when you’ve just been flayed to all parts by a No.8 and No.7 batsman? Two guys who barely average 30 in test cricket. Sure they’re good players – most cricketers are talented at test level – but this wasn’t Adam Gilchrist destroying our ‘attack’. It was the captain and wicket keeper of a team that usually can’t buy a win in test cricket; a team that lost its last test (against Bangladesh) in an innings. I don’t want to take anything away from the admirable and...
We’ve got two different views on yesterday’s action for you today. I’ll go first and then Alex, the eternal optimist, will have his say … 77 all out. Sigh. What a stinking pile of donkey crap. If I was James Anderson I’d tell the batsmen to do one and get on the next plane home. He and Ben Stokes deserved better than the rubbish England’s batsmen served up yesterday. Yes the bowling was very good. Yes the pitch was doing a bit. But this pitiful performance...
He’s pretty good, isn’t he. Jimmy Anderson, England’s best cricketer for years, proved once again that age is no barrier in professional cricket. I would say it’s no barrier in life in general, but judging by the way my hangovers seem to get worse and worse every year, I think that would be stretching things – almost as much as my middle-aged paunch is stretching the fetching tracky bottoms I’m currently wearing. Of course, I’m a mere mortal compared to...
