Posts Categorised: Test Cricket

2Earth Cricket BallEntertaining the masses — a side to please everyone, perhaps?

Many say test match crick­et is lan­guish­ing in the doldrums at this moment in time. There’s all sorts of plans being chucked around to try and heave it up by its coat tails. Such one sided demoli­tions as the Eng­land Sri Lanka series only add weight to the naysay­ers cause and the half empty (or should that be full?!) stands at Chester Le Street don’t exactly help matters.
As always the answer to turn things around isn’t straight for­ward. We’re all search­ing for that sil­ver bul­let or mir­acle cure to guar­an­tee packed sta­dia but the only thing that is clear is that there is no simple answer.
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0Pitch Perfect England Need a Sterner Test

So the first test of the sum­mer is at an end. Well done Eng­land for a vic­tory for what was really a match of men against boys.

Sri Lanka are, to use that oft touted sound-bite, a team in “trans­ition” and boy did it show. It must be remembered, how­ever, that they kept a strong Eng­land bat­ting line up to a tad under the 300 mark – and half of those runs came from the excel­lent Jonny Bair­stow. Alex Hales did well too with a decent knock and must be kick­ing him­self he didn’t con­vert it into a ton. Had it not been for those two it might have been a closer run thing. We will nev­er know.… Read Full Article

0England and Wales Cricket Board logoManagement Need to Stoke the Fire for Success

Wow, incred­ible, fant­ast­ic. I could go on: the list of super­lat­ives to describe the mag­ni­fi­cent (there, I’ve slipped anoth­er one in!) innings by Ben Stokes in the drawn second test has to rank along­side the best ever knocks in inter­na­tion­al cricket.
I know – points to this writer for stat­ing the bleed­in’ obvi­ous! What his innings does do though is high­light the need for Eng­land to be able to not only spot tal­en­ted indi­vidu­als such as Stokes but to nur­ture them and encour­age them to reach their full poten­tial.… Read Full Article

2The Ashes urnNo Star Shines Bright for Either Side

So the Ashes are now at end with Eng­land the vic­tors and Aus­tralia put back in their place. A 3–2 sco­reline flat­ters the green bag­gied ones a little but in truth the last test was a dead rub­ber for Eng­land. They were nev­er going to play to the same level on intens­ity as when they were try­ing to claim the little urn back from our Anti­podean cousins.
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0International Cricket Council logoFour day test matches? no thanks!

With a few recent test matches fin­ish­ing in 3 or 4 days, there has been talk in some quar­ters about redu­cing test matches to 4 days. We’d like to give a resound­ing no thanks sent back to any such ideas.
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0Cricket Australia logoSteve Smith — world number 1 mouth, not number 1 batsman

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Steve Smith who has taken over the “Glen McGrath” pro­fess­or­ship for the pub­lic under­stand­ing of Aus­trali­an hubris. To be fair to McGrath, a man with over 500 test wick­ets, and integ­ral mem­ber of one of the greatest sides of all time, he could be for­giv­en for think­ing his side might white­wash Eng­land, although say­ing it aloud is insult­ing and isn’t a part of the spir­it of respect in which crick­et should be said. Steve Smith how­ever, a man who was pathet­ic the last time he vis­ited Eng­land and pathet­ic again in the cur­rent series (if we exclude his excel­lent double hun­dred which was made on a flat noth­ing pitch at lord’s).
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0The Ashes urnHome conditions — more important than ever?

So, Eng­land have com­pre­hens­ively wrapped up the Ashes with a game to spare. What a turn-around from 18 months ago where they were humi­li­ated by an aver­age Aus­trali­an side. With such huge swings out­come over the past 3 Ashes series the talk­ing heads have focussed on the con­di­tions play­ing a huge part. Are they right to?
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0Cook shows his mettle in a Ballanced performance

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

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.
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