2T20England’s BROADside about resting players

Published by & filed under The Ashes.

As I sit listen­ing to the T20 freak-show (it mar­gin­ally beats whatever soap based rub­bish the wife is watch­ing) I’ve been con­tem­plat­ing the debate that’s been stirred after Eng­land res­ted five key play­ers for the ODI series.

Cap­tain Cook, Bell, Graeme Swann, Jimmy Ander­son and T20 cap­tain Stu­art Broad are all put­ting their feet up and let­ting a new-look Eng­land take on the Aus­sies for the five match series.

Former Cap­tain Michael Vaughan has had his say and Stu­art Broad has fired back. The media have of course jumped on to a healthy debate and stirred it into a bit of a row.… Read Full Article

3The Ashes urnAshes 2013: Team of the series

Published by & filed under The Ashes.

One of the things that sur­prised me dur­ing the series was how the pun­dits com­pared the respect­ive wick­et keep­ers — with Brad Had­din get­ting a pretty good press, whilst Matt Pri­or got a slightly neg­at­ive over­all rat­ing. From what I saw I did­n’t think there was much to pick between them, so I thought I’d see how the num­bers stack up. I figured I might as well do the same for the rest of the sides and see if a team of the series emerges that reflects how well indi­vidu­als have played.

… Read Full Article

0The Ashes urnEngland losing momentum?

Published by & filed under The Ashes.

So, as the final test heads towards a rain soaked draw the pun­dits are search­ing for some­thing to chat­ter about. They finally seem to have got bored of tak­ing pops at the DRS sys­tem, and it isn’t crick­et to kick a team whilst they’re down (i.e. Aus­tralia) so inev­it­ably the atten­tion has turned to Eng­land. It seems that win­ning the series 3–0 (as will doubt­less be con­firmed in around 30 hours time) and win­ning 3 ashes series on the trot is a sign that Eng­land are “los­ing momentum”. What nonsense.

… Read Full Article

1The Ashes urnAustralia hold the upper hand — in a dead rubber match

Published by & filed under The Ashes. Last updated .

Two days in and Aus­tralia cer­tainly have the upper hand. But so what. The Ashes are won and won pretty con­vin­cingly at that. This is a dead-rub­ber match and is very remin­is­cent of Ashes series of old when Eng­land used to sud­denly pull a decent per­form­ance out of the hat when the urn was in the pos­ses­sion of the Aus­sies. Play­ers who time and time again let the team down would sud­denly grab a five-for or score a cen­tury and their series aver­age to the his­tor­ic observ­er would look half-decent.… Read Full Article

1England and Wales Cricket Board logoAussies Tonked — Now to the Future

Published by & filed under The Ashes, Uncategorised. Last updated .

Firstly an apo­logy for not updat­ing the site much of late – along with the oth­er author for this site I’ve been on a drive through Europe.

We are back now though, so fear not.

So, Eng­land wrapped up the Ashes with a barn­storm­ing per­form­ance on the last day to well and truly send them pack­ing. A lot has been writ­ten already about England’s per­form­ance and, in par­tic­u­lar, Stu­art Broad’s per­form­ance. It was excel­lent, end of.

So I’m going to con­cen­trate on some­thing a little dif­fer­ent, a little off-centre if you will.

When Aus­tralia were at their peak a few years back (seems so long ago now!) the one mis­take they made was not to blood up-and-com­ing young­sters so they had a chance to exper­i­ence the highs and lows of test match crick­et.… Read Full Article

0The Ashes urn3–0 to England… what have we learned?

Published by & filed under The Ashes. Last updated .

I’ve been away on hol­i­day for the past 2½ weeks and haven’t had chance to write about the crick­et. Dur­ing that time there have been 2 more Ashes test matches and Eng­land have exten­ded their lead to 3–0. Hav­ing been away from all the talk­ing heads I haven’t heard what they have to say, so here are some of my own thoughts, unin­flu­enced by the pundits.

… Read Full Article

0Hotspot Snickometer Hawkeye DRSWhy is DRS technology coming under fire?

Published by & filed under Uncategorised. Last updated .

I actu­ally star­ted the out­line of this art­icle over 2 weeks ago. Since then I’ve been abroad, whilst the cri­ti­cisms of DRS have just got louder. There wont be any fence sit­ting from me — I’m a big fan of the DRS sys­tem, and I intend to deal with all the cri­ti­cisms I’ve heard and put for­ward a sol­id case for the use of tech­no­logy in cricket.
… Read Full Article