Top two teams in Group 1 at World Cup have been narrowed decisively to the top one – and it most certainly isn’t AustraliaIf you wish for something hard enough, according to some self-help books based upon little more than the songwriting of Pinocchio, it just might come true. So went the script in the T20 World Cup, but the wrong way for Australia: a team relying on a Test configuration that was undone at the start by England’s Test‑style bowling.When facing them there is a range of T20 options to consider. The ripping leg spin of Adil Rashid, who opened proceedings in Dubai and bowled three dot balls in a first over that went for six runs. The left-arm...
The addition of Ben Stokes to England’s Ashes squad will lift Joe Root’s men and cause even the most confident of Australians to endure a few sleepless nightsHe’s back! The ginger-haired miracle-maker, the swaggering game-changer, the un-stoppered bottle of pungent cologne that promises the world with a single whiff. Yes, against all the odds, England will be drenched in eau de Ben Stokes during the Ashes this winter, and a little goes a very long way.Stokes has spent much of the summer bedding down, after stepping away from cricket to prioritise his mental health and to rest a left index finger that had been plaguing him since he broke it playing for the Rajasthan Royals in the first part of...
Chris Silverwood’s team is behind where he hoped it would be, but India’s series victory can provide a blueprint for successThere was a slightly anticlimactic feel to the announcement of England’s squad for the upcoming Ashes tour. Maybe it was only natural. The England management had, after all, spent a good two years talking about this team, and its goal of urn recovery, right up to the point when a sudden screeching of brakes indicated that hey, there might not even be an Ashes this year anyway. At which point, fans adopted the brace position and prepared themselves for the even-worse-case-scenario – not that England wouldn’t tour, but that they’d arrive at Brisbane with a team devoid of Root, Buttler,...
We’ve already had the first exchanges of chippiness and the start of the actual cricket now cannot come soon enoughThe Ashes series is go. Sort of. Kind of. The Ashes series is confirmed as long as various requirements are met when it comes to quarantining and playing in Australia. Which is effectively the same position that the England & Wales Cricket Board has been taking for the last few months, before Friday’s statement officially conveying the above. The important thing is that now they have said they actually will be going to Australia. Unless later they decide they are not. In which case they will say that they are not. Crowds are warmly invited to book tickets on this basis.We...
Trescothick threw light on to the mental health problems in cricket, and we need better understanding more than everTime flies. It’s been 15 years since Marcus Trescothick last played for England, in a warmup match against New South Wales in November 2006. He broke down in the dressing room on the last day of the game – “All the same feelings of irrational fear, despair and panic came back in wave after bloody great wave” – and flew back to England that same evening. The team management described it as a “recurrence of a stress-related illness”. There were a lot of accusations, jokes and innuendoes, which were only put straight when Trescothick published his autobiography in 2008, and people at...