Posts Tagged: Gary Ballance

0Bangladesh Cricket logoCongratulations to Bangladesh as England Spin to Defeat

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

Well done Bangladesh on a first test win over Eng­land. The vic­tory was thor­oughly deserved and the series could have so eas­ily fin­ished 2–0 to the hosts rather than the 1–1 draw.
Both matches were excel­lent adverts for test crick­et in that they were test­ing for both teams with the Tigers in my mind claim­ing a points vic­tory over the two games. In Mehedi Has­an they have clearly unearthed a young dia­mond who may yet help to pro­pel his team to more vic­tor­ies against the top teams.… 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

0India take the initiative into the third test

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

Two tests in, 1–0 to India. England’s poor sum­mer con­tin­ued apace today with a shock­ing (sorry, appalling) col­lapse after lunch today to hand the vis­it­ors the ini­ti­at­ive going for­ward into the rest of the series. On cur­rent evid­ence it would be hard to see past India win­ning the series.
… Read Full Article

0How to manage a problem like England

Published by & filed under Test Cricket. Last updated .

In a way I am almost glad Eng­land failed to grind out a draw against Sri Lanka. Had they done so it would have been seen by many as some sort of mira­cu­lous escape. Backs to the wall, sto­ic defence when the chips were down. It must not, how­ever, detract from a dire per­form­ance. For the ump­teenth time the bats­men have let us down. The last Ashes on Eng­lish soil were won des­pite, not because of our bats­men and the over­all pic­ture hasn’t improved since then.… 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

0Ashes to Ashes, England to Dust

Published by & filed under Test Cricket, The Ashes. Last updated .

For what I am about to say may I be struck down from above…but I am glad that this Ashes series is at an end. Quite simply Aus­tralia have played far bet­ter than the sum of their indi­vidu­al parts and Eng­land have been, for the large part, abso­lutely diabolical.

As sure as night fol­lows day the Aus­sies wrapped up a dev­ast­at­ing 5–0 series win, yet again bowl­ing Eng­land out for a piti­ful total not worthy of an inter­na­tion­al line up. The vis­it­ors now need to go back, re-group and pick up the pieces from this poten­tially dis­astrous tour down-under.… 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