They’re a mix of blithe spirits, father-son thoroughbreds and bargain basement pickups. But for all their differences, Collingwood proved in the thrilling win over Port Adelaide that they are united in their ruthlessness.As Collingwood prepared to run out at the Adelaide Oval on Saturday night, Craig McRae was in a side room meditating. Whether you’re coaching them, plotting against them, or taking them in as a neutral, centring yourself for ten or 15 minutes isn’t a bad strategy because just watching the Magpies can leave you jangled.It makes sense that Collingwood’s psychologist sits on the bench during games, a few seats up from the coach. She hammers home key messages and puts her arm around some of the more hot-headed...
Pat Cummins has endured two of his worst days as Australia captain, with the tourists left hoping for weekend rainYou can start with pure numbers. Once in Test history has a team made a bigger score at a faster rate. In a world of obscure stats that one offers clarity. In Manchester on Friday, England made 592 runs at 5.49 an over. The team to better this mark was England again, pretty much the same team, eight months earlier, with 657 runs at 6.50 against Pakistan. That time it had been a calculated plan to create a chance to win on the flattest track imaginable in Rawalpindi. This time was about using an opportunity that gradually took form as Australia...
Anderson failed to make the ball talk but otherwise this was a great day for the freewheeling hosts in push to level the AshesEngland have often given Jimmy Anderson a stage in this series. It happened again just before tea on the third day of an Old Trafford Test that already feels like a piece of deeper theatre, a staging point in that narrative arc taking us on to the Oval and last things, reckoning- ups, perfect endings.England walked out at 3pm into a thin white Manchester sun, a pre-rain sun (unless specifically stated otherwise all Manchester sun is pre-rain sun, in-between sun). Australia were 275 runs behind at the start of their second innings and looking a little dizzy and...
Composure on his way to 61 for England gives impression that cricket will not eat him in the way it eats so many of its young“Just another game,” Harry Brook declared in an interview with Wisden Cricket Monthly ahead of this Ashes series. “The same ball coming down at me. Just another human bowling a little round leather thing at another human. And I’ve got to hit it with a bit of wood. That’s it, really.”We can assume that Nasser Hussain’s job at Sky Sports is probably safe for the time being. But in another sense it was a quote that cut to the heart of what has made Brook one of the world’s most devastating players. Playing for England...
Bizarro version of the Australia batter is contradictory to the rest but emerges often enough to be part of the wholeThere are times when Steve Smith is surprised by a shot he has just played. Not surprised that it has worked so well, or badly, but that it has happened at all. He stares down at his hands, his bat, as though his body has betrayed him, like a rider might look down at a backfiring motorbike or an ill-tempered horse. There is Smith the vessel and Smith the occupant, acting out the concept of dualism for a live studio audience.That was Smith in Manchester yesterday. His first ball of the fourth Ashes Test was unremarkable: short without menace, one...