Former captain made chasing a big total look straightforward against India as Stokes’s side revel in a new way of thinkingYou won’t win Test matches playing like that. You can’t walk down the wicket and hit Mohammed Shami through midwicket, not in his first over. And you shouldn’t try to reverse-scoop Shardul Thakur for six either, even if you are on 120 at the time. Don’t get caught at mid-off the very next ball after you’ve been dropped there, especially when you’re the captain and your team are 267 runs behind. You ought not to have three slips in for Rishabh Pant when he’s 100 not out and running away with the game. You won’t beat India if you’re 132...
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...