Today I’m going to see the Miami Dolphins play the Oakland Raiders at Wembley. It’s the first of three NFL matches in the UK this year. All sold out months ago. That’s 250,000 tickets sold, six months in advance, to watch two average teams with a small English fanbase play in stadium that’s pretty poorly located and quite hard to get to. In my opinion, that’s quite an achievement. This is the eighth year that one or more regular season NFL games have taken place at Wembley, so the novelty...
Today I’m going to invoke a little nostalgia. The subject is first cricketing experiences – the powerful formative memories which fuelled your infatuation with the game. The landmarks which shaped your personal cricketing narrative. Your firsts. I’ll kick off by describing my own. And then I’d love to hear yours. The first time you watched cricket Although I grew up with a cricket-loving father, and similarly inclined younger brother, with the game always on TV in our...
Apologies for the rather blunt headline, but today I’m grumpier than a piles sufferer who’s run out of Germoloids. Only the England cricket team, organised by a cosy little club with a penchant for ignoring all evidence, would send a team to a World Cup with a captain who doesn’t warrant a place in the side and a coach who has never won a single one-day trophy. I doubt even the FA would be this daft. Can you imagine England appointing Alan Pardew as manager and then flying to Brazil with Tom...
Here’s something we’ve not done for a very long time – not since the world was a more innocent and carefree place: our cricket quiz. The usual protocol applies: enter your answers below (squinting as you scroll down to avoid seeing other people’s). To negate spoilers completely, e-mail your answers instead to maxie@thefulltoss.com In the event of a tie, the winner will be chosen by Paul Downton after three months of due diligence. First prize is a week’s camping...
There is no equivalent of Kick it Out, football’s anti-racism group, in cricket. But the ECB certainly seems intent on kicking Yorkshire’s captain in the nether regions. Last week Andrew Gale was denied the chance to lift the county championship trophy because he was serving a ban for abusing Ashwell Prince. Now we hear the ECB have officially charged Gale with making a racist slur. So what exactly did Gale say? By all accounts, after being confronted by Prince, and told to fornicate back to...
It’s now only three weeks until Kevin Pietersen’s book is published. Across the crickosphere the air hums with the sound of knives being sharpened, loins being girt, hatches being battened down. It is the eve of the war. This won’t be pretty. During the next month or so, we will hear claims and counter claims, perceptions aplenty, and just maybe, some specific and genuine information which sheds light on the ugliest chapter in English cricket history since the rebel tours. On...
