An eclectic, whimsical oeuvre of musings and ponderings on cricket, lovely cricket.
For the organisers and aficionados of the Open Championship, the Premier League, the Gold Cup and the National Football League the sporting life can be a testing business. Not the organisers of the famed and esteemed championship or event but those involved with the other one. Convention dictates that the first mention of these four... Continue Reading →
With the cricket season almost two months into the future and amid a vicious, bitter cold snap the prospect of a fascinating summer flashed before one’s eyes six days into February. During a lazy lunchtime peruse of Twitter news filtered through that Sussex had announced a marquee signing for the summer’s T20 Blast competition. The... Continue Reading →
Sport is an ephemeral business. Understandably, there is a perpetual sense of transience regarding the whole kit and caboodle and rarely does any aspect remain the same. No sooner has one season concluded than plans are formulated for the next. Players come and go with regularity, blazing a trail across the sporting landscape before fading... Continue Reading →
Scratch beneath the surface of the first-class structure and one reaches the Second XI tier, a virtual mirror image of the first team equivalent in that there is a multi-day championship, a fifty over competition and a twenty over equivalent. The Second XI level offers some subtle differences though as three non-county teams have, in... Continue Reading →
Twenty-nine days after this author’s trip to Guards Polo Club to enjoy some Bank Holiday action the high goal polo circus has decamped forty odd miles to the south and the bucolic expanses of Cowdray Park Polo Club in West Sussex. Instantly, contrasts between watching Polo at Guards and watching Polo at Cowdray Park is... Continue Reading →
When the fixtures were first released last November one must admit to glossing over the scattered selection of day night County Championship matches. The experiment had proved intriguing during the 2017 summer, enough to provoke a journey to the Ageas Bowl (a most dislikeable ground for this author) for the opening night. Indeed, the experience... Continue Reading →
Cricket, in some respects, is a game of patience. Batsmen wait for a poor delivery upon which to pounce and score runs. Bowlers require patience whilst attempting to dismiss the batsmen. Fielders require patience in order to maintain concentration during the potentially lengthy periods when the ball may not venture into the area which they... Continue Reading →
English cricket loves an anomaly. From the MCC itself and its influence in the domestic game to the first-class status proffered upon a selection of matches involving University teams to the presence of the Irish, Scottish and Dutch national teams in the Natwest Trophy at various junctures to the Unicorns representative team similarly entered into... Continue Reading →
Almost invariably the reaction is the same: “Oh, that’s a sport for the rich.” The dismissive, almost disdainful, response is predictable and technically correct but rather ignorant. To so readily scoff at a sport because of finances seems rather churlish though. No attempt to learn or understand the intricacies, just a figurative raising of one’s... Continue Reading →
