Today friend of the site Garreth Duncan reminisces about great innings made in losing causes … Cricket history tells us that great innings win your side the match against the odds. We all know these great knocks like the back of our hands – Botham’s Ashes heroics in 1981, Brian Lara’s magnificent unbeaten 153 to beat the Aussies in Barbados in 1999, and Laxman and Dravid’s epic fightback following on at Eden Gardens in 2001. 2019 was a particular treat, as cricket lovers were treated to...
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...
Srinivas is back with his recollections of Anil Kumble’s unexpected century at The Oval in 2007. The tour marked a significant moment for Indian cricket albeit not one of England’s finest moments. It is Day 2 of The Oval Test of 2007 between India and England. Kevin Pietersen bowls the fifth delivery of England’s 165th over in the first innings. Anil Kumble, who is several yards down the pitch, places – if a fortuitously thick inside edge could be called that – the ball between the...
Is there room for Beefy, Freddie, and Stokes in the same XI? What about KP and other existential dilemmas? New writer Adriraj Chakraborty names his best post-Packer England white ball XI … The reigning World Champions are spoilt for white-ball player choices right now. But that was not always the case (although Beefy in his prime could have walked into any ODI or T20 squad after a big night of pounding his favourite beverage and least favourite Chappell). This XI rewinds the golden years...
If we were to estimate the number of newspaper column inches devoted to selection over the years, the accumulated distance would likely be enough to circle the equator of Jupiter several times and we’d still have enough left for a thinly-veiled dig at the foibles of every selection supremo the ECB have thrown at us. Selection, it seems, is an inexact science, at the whims of form, fitness, funkiness, flakiness, flunkies and whatever the f*** they were smoking at the time. I started...
Here’s new writer Rob Stephenson with a tribute to Lancs legend Peter Martin … My first experience of live cricket was back in 1991- a reserve England side played Sri Lanka A at Old Trafford. I got my first ever autograph from a tall blonde bloke wondering round the boundary. This was Peter Martin. Shortly after this match I became a Lancashire member, and my teenage years of cricket watching coincided with the great Lancashire one day team of that era. They won a number of trophies...
