Posts Categorised: Test Cricket

0The Ashes urnEngland’s starting 11 picked by Michael Clarke

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In a refresh­ingly can­did inter­view Aus­trali­an cap­tain Michael Clarke has announced the Eng­land start­ing 11 for the first Ashes test. We’re not sure it’s a good thing that he seems to know the team, but the team he lis­ted is the team we would have picked ourselves, so it could be just intel­li­gent guesswork.

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0The Ashes urnAm I in an alternate universe?

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Can I just double check with our read­ers — Eng­land did win the Ashes 3–0 at home this sum­mer did­n’t they?  I’m not stuck in an altern­ate uni­verse where Eng­land were thrashed?  I’ll con­tin­ue on the assump­tion that I am in fact in the same uni­verse as every­one else, and that Eng­land did indeed win, in which case I have to assume that a large sec­tion of the media, includ­ing the BBC are the ones in an altern­ate uni­verse.… Read Full Article

2T20England’s BROADside about resting players

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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

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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.

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0The Ashes urnEngland losing momentum?

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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.

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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