If the insatiable elite want to follow the IPL’s example, then let them if it helps counter football’s growing predictabilityConsider the start of this season. What do you see? Do the chaotic results – Manchester City letting in five, Manchester United letting in six, Liverpool letting in seven, Everton and Aston Villa top of the table, Chelsea making 3-3 their default result – engender a thrill of excitement at the unpredictability of it all? Or did you see the two Manchester clubs in the bottom half of the table after last weekend, and Tottenham and Chelsea seventh and eighth, and worry that this might damage revenue streams for teams favoured by the global audience? Related: Revealed: Greg Clarke's real role...
Cricket was not always so precious when it came to bowlers running out batsmen for backing up too farTo Dubai, and Ravi Ashwin’s ongoing escapades for the Delhi Capitals. Over the past few months Ashwin has been running something of a one-man campaign to legitimise cricket’s most nefarious means of dismissal, the Mankad. Which, if you need a gloss, is when the bowler runs out the batsman as he’s backing up at the non-striker’s end. Ashwin did it to Jos Buttler last season. “Disgraceful‚” said Shane Warne. “Completely out of order‚” said Michael Vaughan.Ashwin was unapologetic. This year he has being coached by Ricky Ponting, who warned “we won’t be doing that”. Instead, Ponting said, he wanted Ashwin to “hold...
It is fascinating to recall now that when Twenty20 was starting out there were real questions about who would come to colonise this new worldThe weather forecast for Birmingham this weekend isn’t messing about. Usually weather in this country is described in gentle language, using words such as patchy or intermittent, and reflecting the fluid nature of these things on an island of mild fronts and shifting breezes.Not so here. Frankly the weather forecast is annoyed you’re even asking these questions. “Yellow warning: rain,” was the Met Office’s first draft. This was updated on Thursday to a Danger To Life Alert. To be clear, the Met Office thinks it’s going to rain so much in Birmingham this weekend it might...
The ECB has had to prioritise this Covid-19 affected season but a ‘gender-balanced game’ remains the goal for the ruling bodyIf frost arrives unexpectedly, or cruelly, tender, young plants wither and die. Hardier ones are more likely to see it out, with only a browned leaf as a war wound, raring to sprout after a prudent prune. Timing, as ever, is everything.And so to women’s cricket, frosted by Covid-19 in the sharpest way. With two international series for England, against India and South Africa, a new Hundred competition complete with joint marketing alongside the men’s franchises (if much less exposure on television) and player contracts worth up to £15,000, this summer was expected to be a vital one. Related: Charlotte...
International players previously at loggerheads are building relationships that transcend the sub-continental slogfest just as used to be the case in the English county gameI have been dipping into the Indian Premier League between taking refuge from the icy winds of Taunton in the same way as my father might have done many years ago or as I did myself as a youngster, though of course it is infinitely easier now.My father would occasionally go to the County Ground to watch those mystical, legendary figures he had heard and read about but had seldom seen. He went to catch a glimpse of the great Wally Hammond, Denis Compton or Harold Gimblett and hopefully they would oblige with some runs. Likewise...