Posts Tagged: Alastair Cook

2T20England’s BROADside about resting players

Posted 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

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

0England v New ZealandEngland vs New Zealand: Second Test, Day 5

Published by & filed under Test Cricket. Last updated .

And so it happened.

Eng­land wrapped up a con­vin­cing vic­tory thus tak­ing the series 2–0. It was all a little too easy. Only the weath­er could have saved New Zea­l­and from cer­tain defeat. It rained, but just not quite enough, and Eng­land stepped up to the plate and showed their true class.

They are a far bet­ter side than New Zea­l­and and they proved it. The bowl­ing attack in par­tic­u­lar through­out the series have per­formed very well although the Kiwis’ attack hasn’t done too badly either.… Read Full Article

0England v New ZealandEngland vs New Zealand: Second Test, Day 4

Published by & filed under Test Cricket. Last updated .

Bit of a steady day today… if the weath­er is OK tomor­row Eng­land will almost cer­tainly win and if it chucks it down then a draw would seem likely.

But it should already be all over with a com­fort­able vic­tory, prob­ably by an innings. Cook should have enforced the fol­low-on. Even if Eng­land had ended up los­ing he would have made a clear state­ment of intent and put a mark­er down that he is an aggress­ive and gutsy char­ac­ter who takes no pris­on­ers. Instead he took the defens­ive option.… Read Full Article

0England v New ZealandEngland vs New Zealand: Second Test, Day 3 — England Booming

Published by & filed under Test Cricket. Last updated .

There are vari­ous top­ics I could have chosen to write about after the third day of the second test in the Eng­land vs New Zea­l­and series.

The issues that imme­di­ately jump out are 1) anoth­er fant­ast­ic per­form­ance by England’s bowl­ers against a woe­ful Kiwi bat­ting line up 2) a lovely return to form of the home side’s skip­per and open­ing bat Alastair Cook 3) four wick­ets for Swann or 4) the highly debat­able decision by Eng­land not to enforce the fol­low on (almost guar­an­tee­ing a series vic­tory but greatly redu­cing the chances of a vic­tory in the match with rain fore­cast). But today I am going to swerve a little left of centre and focus on some­thing entirely different…

They say every day is a school day and today I learnt some­thing new today… The great mous­ta­chioed former middle order Aus­sie slug­ger Dav­id Boon is match ref­er­ee for this test. I like to think I have a good grasp of world crick­et events but the pro­mo­tion of the talis­man­ic Tas­mani­an as a world ref­er­ee in 2011 is some­thing that passed me by but is some­thing that also pleases me greatly.… Read Full Article

0England v New ZealandEngland vs New Zealand: Second Test, Day 2

Published by & filed under Test Cricket. Last updated .

First off a great big cherry bun with extra icing con­grat­u­la­tions to my fel­low York­shire lad Joe Root for his maid­en cen­tury. Joe – who even went to the same school as me and my fel­low author of this web­site (King Ecg­berts in Shef­field) – simply oozes class. Bar­ring injury he’s going to be an Eng­land fix­ture for many years to come.

But Joe aside there has to be con­cern at the form, or lack there­of, of the Eng­land top order. And ques­tions need to be raised for a team with designs on the World num­ber one test rank­ing.… Read Full Article