‘Whatever happened to all the heroes?’ The Stanglers once sung. When it comes to the England cricket team, they’ve got a point. Since the retirement of Andrew Flintoff, we haven’t really had any heroes – not proper cult heroes anyway. Whereas we had the swashbuckling Sir Ian in the 1980s, tinkle toes Darren Gough in the 90s, and Freddie himself in 2005, recent England sides have lacked that true inspirational figure. Players like Cook, Trott and Anderson are all very good cricketers, but...
Welcome to the twilight zone – day 3 at Auckland
New Zealand 443 & 35-3. England 204. This is probably the most bizarre test match I’ve ever seen. Absolutely nothing makes sense. The pitch is an absolute belter; yet scoring rates have barely reached two runs per over. At one point yesterday England were 115-5 off 65 overs; in their second innings New Zealand are 35-3 off 23 overs. What’s more, the boundaries are extremely short on certain sides of the ground. It should be a boundary fest (like the ODIs from Auckland were) but instead it’s...
Why England will retain the Ashes – Part II
Here’s the second part of Shaun Edward’s epic Ashes preview … Two: Batting Long. Or, if you’re being less kind, batting dull. In the last victorious Ashes series, the main plan was to bat once, and bat long. It worked, England winning all three of their matches by an innings, having racked up scores of 620, 513 and 644. Even in the drawn opener at the Gabba they saved the game with a truly monstrous 517-1 declared. I’ll be honest: when Andrew Strauss hung up the boots and...
Captain Courageous – day four at Ahmedabad
India 521-8 dec. England 191 & 340-5 lead by 10 runs Here’s a message to all the Indian fans who post on cricinfo. I’m not talking about the mature, respectful and insightful ones, I’m talking about the childish ones with a chip on their shoulder: this is what ‘fight’ looks like. In times gone by, England teams would have folded in these circumstances – much like India folded meekly in their 4-0 thrashing in England last year. When presented with a huge first innings deficit, and conditions...
Outgunned and outthought – the day we lost our No.1 crown
After a miserable 12 months, is it time for Strauss to say goodbye? It’s time to grit those teeth and utter the words no Englishman wants to hear: ‘well done South Africa, you played the better cricket and deserved to win’. I don’t honestly think we can complain. The XI we selected was found wanting. At least it was an honourable defeat though. The last two test matches have been pretty even affairs – and thanks to Matt Prior, who has looked our best batsman (and was rightly named England’s...
Smashing baby: Matt Prior loses temper, breaks window
Day Five at Lords. Eng 335-7. Sri Lanka 127-3. Match Drawn An anticlimactic fifth day at Lord’s came alive after lunch when Matt Prior smashed a window in the home dressing room after being run out by Ian Bell – covering the patrons below in glass. Both wicket-keeper and captain were forced to make a somewhat red-faced apology, and the pun maestros on Twitter went into overdrive. What a ‘pane’. Various theories have emerged as to how and why the window broke. Some say Prior threw down his...
