All eyes are obviously on the World T20 at the moment. But if England lose to Sri Lanka on Saturday, Matthew Mott and his team’s attention will immediately turn to 50-over cricket again. With that in mind, Rob Stephenson discusses how things are shaping up ahead of our World Cup defence in India next year. The side has, after all, lost both its inspirational skipper and the man-of-the-match in that memorable Lord’s final against New Zealand in 2019… Bizarrely, even for the...
The England men’s Test team has a problem. Well, it has several: a gallery of injured bowlers, an inconsistent middle order and the ever-looming prospect of a pace attack without James Anderson. Just to name a few. Yet one issue stands out among the rest, a conundrum so taxing that it’s had selectors scratching their heads for more than a decade. Who should open the batting. More accurately, who can open the batting. The selectors have looked far and wide in search of a sturdy...
They celebrated like they’d actually won the World Cup. And good on ‘em. But Ireland’s win against England on Wednesday morning neither felt as dramatic nor embarrassing as our previous losses to minnows. In fact, it all felt a bit hollow – as most victories by Duckworth Lewis tend to feel. The hardest step in sport is always the final one, when victory is dangling in front of you. And now, thanks to the Melbourne weather – honestly, does it ever stop raining in Australia? –...
Chris Eyes returns with a tribute to cricketers possessing ‘vocational’ names. Enjoy… As the 2022 English summer fades into memory now and the landscape of the game is changing, let us spare a thought for those cricketers not on full time contracts or big money T20 deals. You know, the ones who, like the rest of us, must return to occupations outside cricket to keep bringing home the bacon, or earning a crust. So with that in mind, I have endeavored to undertake selection of...
So the Men’s T20 World Cup is well and truly underway and we’ve already had a couple of eyebrow raising results. Roger Moore would’ve been in his element. Firstly, Namibia absolutely obliterated a shell-shocked Sri Lanka and then Scotland, of all people, beat former champions the West Indies by a large margin, too. It just goes to show how unpredictable the T20 format can be. It’s both it’s strength and, in some ways, its weakness. Fortunately for England, however, there were no such problems...
Today we welcome Peter Zitterschlager to TFT. I really enjoyed this… Should the unthinkable happen, and future generations spurn Test cricket, what do they lose? Much of the game’s equivalent of flora and fauna, I dare say. Indeed, if the world wildlife fund had its eye on cricket’s welfare, it would catalog a distressing number of endangered aspects. The list would probably come out like this: 1. Textbook batting. Status: vulnerable Should T20 be cricket’s only environment, textbook...
