Jimmy Anderson could lose his seam partner should the tourists opt for horses for courses in GalleThis is a special place for a Test match. Two sides of Galle’s cricket ground are flanked by the ocean and a third is overlooked by the magnificent old Dutch fort where the pauper and the miser can share an excellent view of the cricket. On Saturday the skeletons of the awnings to be fixed over the stands were being erected to prevent English spectators from being frazzled or drenched come Tuesday for the first Test against Sri Lanka – hopefully the former is the greater peril but there are no guarantees at this time of the year.There was also some activity out in...
Who would World Cup opposition openers least want to face on a nibbly early-summer morning? Anderson, Wood or Stone?If I had to draw up a top-five list of eccentric 20th-century British army officers Jack Churchill would definitely be up there, at the very least in the mix. A male model, film actor and expert archer and fencer, “Fighting Jack” was also the last British soldier to insist on marching into battle with a sword, longbow and a set of bagpipes, as he did to great effect against the mechanised might of the Third Reich.Churchill used his bow and arrow to lead a successful ambush of a German patrol in northern France in May 1940, an act that helped him win...
Every time the al-Jazeera documentary seems to be getting to the nitty-gritty the names of those claimed to be conniving with cricket’s spot-fixers are withheldThe most recent al-Jazeera documentary on spot-fixing in cricket is to be welcomed but it remains a source of frustration as well. The scope to manipulate a game of cricket for betting purposes has been with us for two centuries or more and any reminder of that is a useful deterrent. But we crave more hard facts than the “unsupported allegations” referred to by David Leatherdale, the chief executive of the Professional Cricketers’ Association who confirmed on Monday “the [English] players refute all allegations and have the full support of the PCA”.This latest documentary expands on...
Roguish interloper who stole radio rights to England’s winter tours bowls tidy opening over for listeners fearing loss of TMSThe barbarians are at the gates. The lunatics are on the grass. Ten kilo bags of mixed gravel aggregate are two‑for‑one at your local Bumcrack Warrior Warehouse. And most alarming of all, starting with Wednesday’s rain‑ravaged first one‑day international in Dambulla, the cricket is now on commercial radio.When the news broke in April that TalkSport had outbid the BBC to take the radio rights for England’s tour of Sri Lanka the response was mixed. Reactions tended to veer between mild irritation at the loss, for a few months, of a much‑loved programme; to wistful, sun-bleached nostalgia for a world shadowed with...
Echoes of Arjuna Ranatunga’s World Cup-winning blueprint – potent spinners, pinch-hitting openers, bucket loads of confidence – can be seen in the England ODI side todayAs England and Sri Lanka prepare for the five-match one-day series starting on Wednesday in Dambulla, a warm-up of sorts for the World Cup now less than eight months away, it feels the right time to stumble backwards 22 years, to one of cricket’s greatest stories.On 17 March 1996, in the sultry atmosphere of Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium, Arjuna Ranatunga, Sri Lanka’s captain, lifted the World Cup high into the air. No one could quite believe it. Sri Lanka, the baby brother of the Asian block, the international whipping boys, had popped out of the hat,...