duh2
Cricket is many things, yet perhaps most of all it is an act of anxiety. Much of the sport’s anxiety comes from the tension between the team and the individual. Fail in tennis, golf or some other individual sport and there is no team to pick you up, no cover for your unforced error. The failure is isolating, crushing. Fail in a team sport, say football or rugby, and you have let down not only yourself but others. Your misplaced pass could be the difference between victory and another rotten...
Of all the images for which England’s clean sweep clinching series win at Headingley will be remembered, there will perhaps be none as endearing as Jack Leach collecting the man-of-the-match award. The fledgling weeks of the Ben Stokes-Brendon McCullum era have been characterised by brutally attacking displays with the bat. And yet, it is the left-arm spinner who has in many ways epitomised the new attitude and atmosphere that has been planted within this England side. Collecting the customary...
It only seems to be a couple of months since I suggested on this website that the answer to England’s captaincy problems might be Sam Billings; and that Ben Stokes couldn’t be expected to take it on after his recent mental health problems, and the risk of undermining his own game. We have just watched a team – fundamentally the same timid outfit that was trounced in Australia and West Indies – take Test champions New Zealand to the cleaners in three matches. Each of the games...
We love our cricketing nicknames. The sadness is that a lot of players just add ‘ey’ to a surname (yawn!), but there are still some cracking ones out there. Steve Smith, for example, is called ‘Piggy’ because he looks like one. Although maybe ‘Crocodile Tears’ would be better? There’s also ‘King’ Kohli but we’re rejecting that. Mainly because we prefer the following instead… Michael Holding – Whispering Death An all-time classic, talking about Holding’s run-up. Shane Warne – Hollywood...
