Former captain’s legacy is secure although his energy in the field doesn’t make up for the alarming drop in form with the batIn the film Crank, Jason Statham stars as a hitman who – as a result of being poisoned by a rival gangster – will die unless he can maintain his adrenaline above a certain level. To this end he is forced to engage in constant acts of self-stimulation, from taking cocaine to starting random fights to having sex in public.Not a lot of people outside Hollywood know this. But Statham’s character in that film was based directly on Virat Kohli. Continue reading...
Opener struggled for form in the West Indies but a change in approach and mindset has brought runs and boundaries Mid-March, England were playing West Indies at Bridgetown and Alex Lees was batting. Lees had made four and six on his debut the previous week and here his partner, Zak Crawley, had just been caught behind for a duck. Kemar Roach was bowling. Roach tried a wide one outside off, inviting Lees to drive. He left it. Roach followed with two more in the same sort of place and again Lees refused to play at them. So Roach switched around the wicket, tried bowling straighter, twice, and Lees blocked both deliveries; Roach tried to slide one across him, tempt him...
Pujara does not play in the IPL and instead spent the early part of the summer with Sussex, preparing for this TestMidway through the afternoon, Edgbaston fell into a Sunday lull. The clouds had closed over, the wind had dropped, in the Hollies Stand the Teletubbies were sitting quietly over their pints, the Pope was thumbing his phone and WG Grace seemed to have nodded off into his beard. The last chant of Don’t Take Me Home had died out a while back. No one was roaring, shouting, sighing, or singing, and even that one Indian fan who had spent the entire day screaming Virat Kohli’s name over and over again seemed to have lost his voice. Cheteshwar Pujara can...
Even as India tightened their grip on the fifth Test, Bairstow was beautifully unconstrainedThe sound is unique. How can this be? A regulation cricket bat hitting a regulation cricket ball: logic tells us this should sound the same whoever is swinging it. And yet intuition tells us otherwise.Kevin Pietersen’s shots sounded like the crack of a rifle. Matthew Hayden’s sounded like an axe slicing through a tree. The bat of AB de Villiers, meanwhile, always made a delightful pock noise, however violently he was hitting it, as if he was simply helping the ball to wherever it was meant to go. Continue reading...
England have been playing positive cricket for four weeks, but the slick visitors have perfected it over the past four yearsAt one point during an interminable and broken afternoon at Edgbaston, the camera zoomed in on the array of listless faces on the England balcony. Perhaps this, rather than the swishing blade of Rishabh Pant or Jasprit Bumrah, was the first big test of England’s vivid new approach to Test cricket. Whether with the bat or in the field, this is a team that feeds on momentum, the buzz of a live audience, that lives for the vibe and the thrill, that wants to do everything in a hurry. So what happens when the heavens open with India leading the...