Today new writer Ollie Phillips argues that England’s team selection during the T20 series displayed worrying signs of hubris. Winning the World Cup in 2019 capped off an incredible turnaround of England’s white-ball fortunes. It was a watershed moment for the sport in this country and one that England fans will never forget – bar the odd moment made hazy by one libation too many. Eoin Morgan’s team have become a tremendous limited-overs outfit, and they displayed some of their...
What’s the toughest job in cricket? BattingBowlingFieldingBeing Moeen Ali The answer’s none of the above. Well, at least until the team management puts in a request for Moeen Ali to become a professional umpire as well. Because if Thursday’s 4th T20I had anything to teach us, it was that only the most desperate apply for an umpiring gig. Even trying to extract spin out of English surfaces in the middle of April is an easier task than trying to make peace with dubious replays. The latter’s...
Today we welcome Dave Morton back to TFT. He poses and existential question about bowlers and the role they play … Many years ago, when I was a pre-teen, my parents upped sticks from our native Yorkshire to a Midlands town called Burton upon Trent. My tears and tantrums were roughly ignored, but there were benefits, it turned out. One early one was that I actually met Wilfred Rhodes, probably the greatest all-round cricketer the world had ever seen. (Garfield Sobers was then a teenager, a...
Today we welcome Michael Wood back to TFT. He was some thoughts on the future of Test cricket once life gets back to normal … After some fantastic Test cricket around the world in recent months, it seems churlish to talk money. However, as national cricket boards frantically try to recoup lost revenue by piling on more lucrative forms of the game, it is worth exploring how Test cricket might be funded in a post-COVID-19 world? The pandemic has left cricket finances in a grim state...
I’m writing this a little sheepishly to be honest. Why? Because I don’t want to write this any more than you probably want to read it. One of the reasons why I write so infrequently these days is that my passion for English cricket has diminished considerably. To be frank, I’m almost past caring. However, someone’s got to write a ‘reaction’ to our limp 1-3 surrender in India. So here I am. Somewhat begrudgingly. And I’ll start by simply embedding one of...
Before the Ahmedabad autopsy begins, here’s new writer Dave Morton with something far less depressing … Even to me, it came as a surprise. To someone younger, forty perhaps, it must have been a shock, a light-bulb moment. I refer to the arrival in the England Test team of Ben Foakes, not so much selected as ‘rotated in’, a wicket-keeper at last, after all those years. There it all was: those swift and accurate feet, the balance and, above all, the lightning-fast hands. It took me...
