AuthorJames Morgan

So what did you think? Considering that we normally lose away from home, and our record in the Caribbean isn’t that hot, I probably would’ve taken a draw before the game. It was even a ‘winning draw’. Sort of. Consequently, this result is a small but very tentative step forward. Sort of. The main talking point, however, was probably the pitch. It was poor and not conducive to exciting cricket. It offered the seamers little, the spinners relatively little, and it didn’t really deteriorate (which...

How do you bowl a flipper? That was the burning issue at nets in June 1993. That summer, rather than running in from the sightscreen like Patrick Patterson or Courtney Walsh, us kids suddenly wanted to be a blonde haired leg spinner. But not any old blonde leg spinner. Nobody wanted to be Ian Salisbury. We all wanted to be ‘Warney’ – the cricketing surfer dude come rock star who was completely unlike any professional cricketer we’d ever seen. Shane Warne was cool personified. And he did...

Nothing gets the juices flowing like a good old debate about selection. Everyone has an opinion. And everybody tends to think that they’re right and absolutely everyone else is wrong. It boils the blood and turns even mild-mannered people into a Geoff Boycott or Fred Truman at the drop of a hat. “Not five ruddy seamers again”! Selection is a particularly thorny issue in cricket. There might be the odd debate in football about whether to employ a back four or a back five, and rugby connoisseurs...

Thus far our Ashes post-mortem has focused exclusively on England. And understandably so. English cricket is in a terrible state. Supporters are at each other’s throats and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that our domestic calendar simply can’t prioritise our Test team unless the ECB either drop their beloved pet project, The Hundred, or sacrifice 50 over cricket instead. However, what about our Australian cousins? Presumably everything in their garden is rosy after winning the Ashes 4-0...

This is the most depressed that I’ve ever been as an England cricket supporter. And I sense that many of you feel the same way. Therefore, I’ve taken some time out this weekend to quickly scribble down my thoughts on the current malaise. Apologies if this reads like a stream of consciousness… Why am I so down in the dumps? It’s not so much that England’s Test team is bad – we’ve known that for a while – what’s upset me so much is that the debate surrounding the future is heading in completely...

Nobody likes getting thrashed. It hurts. But sometimes a defeat is so severe, and so utterly brutal, that it creates a much-needed debate on the systemic problems that created it. The opportunity to have this debate in 2018 was missed. But this time, thankfully, people are finally beginning to address the real issues blighting English cricket. Therefore, I’m hopeful that some good might yet come from this hugely damaging Ashes debacle. There’s just one problem. Although people are questioning...