BT Sport’s commentator Alison Mitchell and anchor Matt Smith chat to the Spin about the channel’s plan to be ‘right in amongst it’ in AustraliaLast week BT Sport announced its lineup for the Ashes, the first it will broadcast. Michael Vaughan and Ricky Ponting, who were involved in the station’s first toe-dip in the cricketing pool a year ago, are back, along with Graeme Swann, Geoffrey Boycott, Damien Fleming, Michael Slater and Adam Gilchrist. But while the network is still fairly new to this particular game the team behind the team are no ingenues; the coverage will be produced by Sunset + Vine, which has been working on cricket since taking charge of Channel 4’s first Test broadcasts in 1999...
Using your sporting ability and showing mutual respect while defeating an opponent shows up those who prefer crass trash-talkHow badly do you want it? That’s a question to be directed at an opponent in the form of a challenge, stated or implied. Does that challenge have an acceptable limit? In their different ways, and with very different responses, the Australian cricketer David Warner and the English footballer Troy Deeney both asked the question this week. Related: Australia’s David Warner promises ‘hatred’ and ‘war’ with England in Ashes Continue reading...
England put their trust in a group who know each other but they are light on openers and must also hope their talisman’s right hand heals in timeWhen the selection of Ben Stokes for the Ashes tour becomes headline news, something’s up. At the moment we are assuming – no more than that – Stokes will be available for the start of it. Sadly that depends on the investigations of the Avon and Somerset police and the state of his right hand. Related: Ben Stokes named in Ashes squad despite broken finger and arrest Related: England chase 357 to beat West Indies: fourth ODI – live! Continue reading...
England are going to be casting for Ashes roles during their warm-up matches, which is a little close to opening night to be running auditions, but there is a simple solutionSir Gubby Allen was not, in the delicate phrase of one of his biographers, a “naturally penitent man”. Allen, England captain and MCC president, was also the chair of selectors between 1955 and 1962. It was Allen who persuaded Peter May to recall Cyril Washbrook to play against Australia at Headingley in 1956. Washbrook was 41, and hadn’t played a Test in so long that he was serving as one of the selectors himself. “The press went to town,” Allen wrote, but Washbrook made 98, and England won. As Allen...
The selectors pick their touring party to Australia this week, a task made tougher by losses of fitness and form among key contendersThe selectors meet and decide their Ashes squad this week – the names of England’s tourists will be announced at 10am on Wednesday – and maybe they deserve some sympathy. Their task is tricky and familiar to anyone who has agonised for hours over a jigsaw puzzle only to discover that there are some key pieces missing.Those selectors have already been in the firing line from Durham’s chairman, Sir Ian Botham, who is enraged by the way so many of his county’s talented cricketers are heading south in pursuit of greener, First Division pastures. Botham has hinted that...