Posts Tagged: Liam Plunkett

0Super England Claim Super Series

Published by & filed under England. Last updated .

With just one match left in this new “super series” format between Eng­land and Sri Lanka the home nation have proven them­selves com­pletely dominant
Win­ning the test series comes as no sur­prise – the vis­it­ors were nev­er going to be able to cope with Ander­son and Broad in home con­di­tions – but I expec­ted a stern­er test in the 50-over format.… Read Full Article

0Cook shows his mettle in a Ballanced performance

Published by & filed under England, India, Test Cricket. Last updated .

Well done Alistair Cook. OK, so he missed out on mak­ing a cen­tury, just, but to score 95 when the chips were really down took unbe­liev­able char­ac­ter. The only way he was going to silence the crit­ics was with some runs and hope­fully today’s score marks a per­man­ent return to form. The crowd’s reac­tion when he scored his half cen­tury and the ova­tion when he left the field when speaks volumes as to the sup­port for him amongst the crick­et watch­ing pub­lic. He’s a good man and didn’t deserve some of the diatribe fired his way.

Geof­frey Boy­cott has pre­dicted a draw already – and the Rose Bowl pitch looks like it will pro­duce anoth­er unin­spir­ing match where the bat rules supreme. How ridicu­lous. We need pitches that have some­thing on offer for both bats­men and bowl­ers, one that rewards top expo­nents of both dis­cip­lines. So what if the game is over in four days instead of five? Short term fin­an­cial think­ing risks under­min­ing the entire fab­ric of the game – and then where will the money come from?… Read Full Article

0Sachithra Senanayake Mankades (try saying that after a few beers!)

Published by & filed under County Cricket, Yorkshire. Last updated .

Crick­et is a sport in which most fol­low­ers expect their her­oes to adhere to a high­er stand­ard of fair play and sportsmanship.
The recent incid­ent of ‘Mankad­ing’ (who on earth coined that phrase?) – when Sri Lanka’s Sachi­thra Sen­anayake ran out England’s Jos But­tler who had strayed out of his crease at the non-striker’s end at a key point in the final and decid­ing ODI in the series was dis­ap­point­ing to see and thank­fully remains very rare.
The last incid­ent I can remem­ber is when Kapil Dev ran out South Africa’s Peter Kirsten, appar­ently without warn­ing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzbFy_elb8k
Dif­fer­ing accounts of Tuesday’s shambles say Sen­anayake warned But­tler twice or just the once. Either way, it wasn’t crick­et. The bowl­er shouldn’t have done it and the cap­tain should have over-ruled the appeal. He didn’t, it happened so we are left to count the cost of a strain on the game.
What I don’t like, how­ever, is Eng­land using this unsa­voury con­tro­versy to shield yet anoth­er highly mixed per­form­ance dur­ing a ODI series.
Sri Lanka are a decent side – but without the wick­et tak­ing machine that was Mut­ti­ah Mur­a­lithar­an in the line-up and home advant­age you would have expec­ted Eng­land to win the series.… Read Full Article