While the ball-tampering furore will die down Steve Smith and his side have underestimated the values Australians attach to the game“It ain’t true, is it, Joe?”“Yes, kid, I’m afraid it is.” Related: Steve Smith set to lose Australia captaincy and could face year-long ban Related: Steve Smith must go after scandal that has torched Australia’s reputation | Jason Gillespie Continue reading...
Australia should have been reflecting on an impressive win in South Africa but once again all the talk is of an unsavoury spat between playersHere we go again. A better than decent Test Match concluded on Monday in Durban but will never stand a chance of capturing the attention it deserves. Events of the previous afternoon made sure of that. Press conferences came and went where the participants argued their corner in the usual way. Match officials will try to unpick it all from narrators unlikely to give an inch. Will anything change? Almost certainly not.That David Warner was front and centre was all the spice the tale required. Of course he has form, most of it some years ago,...
England’s victory at the MCG showed the difference between the Test and one-day teams, and where the priorities lie for players for whom the red-ball game is no longer the pinnacleIt was 5C in London last Sunday, unless you had Test Match Special on the radio. Then January felt a few degrees warmer than it really was. Saturday’s hangover was easier too, the morning’s chores more agreeable, the first sip of tea that little bit sweeter. Because for once this winter, England were winning. And half a world away, Jason Roy and Joe Root were walloping Australia’s bowlers all around the MCG. Roy made 180, each six a sorely needed pick-me-up after a month of blue Mondays, when the first...
England’s ODI captain knows how important it is to separate the red and white ball portions of this tour before the series against AustraliaOn a Melbourne February morning in 2014, Eoin Morgan was perched on a bench outside the England team hotel nursing a coffee. He looked refreshed, though in that typical Morgan way, where gauging his mood would be a fool’s lot. Morgan sat, supped and watched the world go by while, within the walls behind him, English cricket was falling over itself.The night before, England were thumped by eight wickets in a Twenty20 at the MCG – the penultimate match of the 2013-14 tour that eventually saw them register only one competitive win (the fourth ODI at Perth)...
Five-match series and a squad of fresh faces give the under-fire Trevor Bayliss the chance to demonstrate his coaching credentials The tour that seemingly never ends has reached the halfway stage. The travel time from England to Australia has been cut considerably from the two months spent on the seas during the 19th century but that has seemingly lent itself to a more relentless schedule. Sunday’s opener at the MCG begins England’s limited-overs bonanza of two five-match ODI series against Australia and New Zealand which sandwich a Twenty20 tri-series between the sides. All in the space of two months.Yet this period brings a palpable sense of relief. Even here, where they will watch Australia win at anything, there is a...