Memories are made down by a county ground sightscreen, not the never-ending schedule of T20 leagues around the worldPsst. This bit is between just us, please. It isn’t something I’d want to get out in public, especially not when I’m in this line of business, but I need to get it off my chest. I don’t much like the Indian Premier League. There, I said it.This, like an acceptance you will never play the Dane, is the sort of self-knowledge you acquire in middle age, but admitting it here exposes me to youthful titters on Twitter, marks me out as the sort of man who probably quite likes gardening, sighs when he settles into a chair, someone who, yes, you...
The demise of the longest form of the game has long been predicted and now the schedules suggest it is becoming realityThis is not the beginning. Well, it is. Although, it never really feels like it. The County Championship eased into gear this week in a way that always seems startling, that for all its buds of life, always feels a bit like death.Here it comes now out of the half-yearly gloom, that familiar tableau of white on mulchy green, the long spring shadows, with a sense from Old Trafford to Cardiff to Chester-Le-Street of something happening just below the daily noise, of scorecards to pore over, skittish runs, gallows humour, newspaper shots of triple-sweatered shapes against clanky steel and...
Now starting its 16th season, the IPL has spawned many imitators but none can match the huge crowds and star cricketersFourteen years ago, I took a train from Glasgow to Greenock. Sitting all around me were preschool children on a trip to the seaside, one of whom ended up giving me chickenpox. If you’ve never had chickenpox as an adult, take it from me: you do not want to get chickenpox as an adult. For almost three weeks I was quarantined in bed, pale and sweating, barely enough energy to paw at the lurid purple buboes sprouting across my face and torso. Soon my days would congeal around the single leisure activity still open to me: watching the Indian Premier...
The IPL’s £5.2bn deal shows where the game is headed but less international cricket might actually make it feel more specialSo what did you do during the great English Cricket Culture Wars? Did you set up a burner Twitter account and start spamming George Dobell? Did you start a furious argument about state schools and free-to-air television with a man who lists his interests as “Wife – Manchester Originals – UFC – but not necessarily in that order!!!!”? Did you share a video of Alice Capsey just doing Alice Capsey things?Alternatively it is entirely possible that you have no idea what any of the last paragraph was about, in which case you enjoy not simply my admiration but my deepest...
Discarded by England, Buttler has been a revelation in the latest iteration of a successful tournament that the English game has long tried, and failed, to emulateJos Buttler stands outside a hotel room door bouncing a ball on his bat. Trent Boult opens the door carrying a guitar, which he strums as they stroll off together. Buttler plays a game where the object is to throw nuts and berries into your partner’s mouth, Buttler cradling the baby-faced left-handed opener Yashasvi Jaiswal in his arms and saying: “Yes, yes, get in there mate,” with a surprising degree of tenderness.Buttler sits on a stool as Ravichandran Ashwin describes his earliest memory of cricket: an enormous tree where, as a very young child,...