Reverse Scoreboard Pressure

The concept of scoreboard pressure is one that has drifted around the environs of cricket for a good few seasons. In its most simplest of terms, scoreboard pressure occurs when Team A bats first on a batting friendly wicket, achieves a significantly high score (usually in excess of 500) and then, more often than not,...

Assumptive Determinism

The refrain is likely familiar to the ears of sports followers. If the referee / umpire hadn’t made a certain decision / disallowed a goal / try / not given the batsman / woman out then one’s chosen team would have won / not lost the match. The refrain is a rationalisation that one moment...

Faded Charms Part Four

Enforcement of the Follow-On: Perennially a cause celebre that provokes great discussion, enforcing the follow-on has become something of a declining tactic in recent years. Ultimately, there is only one major parameter on how a decision should be made and that is primarily the freshness of a team’s bowling attack, although outside influences such as...

Season’s Reflections: The Mysteries of Drama

Team A reaches the final over of their chase needing nine runs for victory. The requirement is tricky but far from impossible. The two batters at the crease have adeptly scored thirty-three runs from the previous twenty deliveries. From a position peering defeat in the face, that old intangible influence, momentum, has pushed the same...

Season’s Reflections: Short-Form Semantics

For any pundit, media type or budding journalist verbally trashing the T20 Blast is almost a rite of passage in current times. Whether such a phenomenon is for personal gain or an actual, genuine assessment is a matter for conjecture, most likely the former, but anyone looking to maintain a presence in the click-bait dominated...

Season’s Reflections: Between the Lines

The response was succinct and precise but incredibly informative. At its most basic level it demonstrated a fundamental flaw in cricket’s, and sport in general, slavish and almost unwavering usage of statistics to explain everything and influence the lion’s share of decision making. The secondary commentator asked why a particular bowler, who had only conceded...

Season’s Reflections: Time to look back

For county cricket supporters the winter months are, predictably, a mournful time. Six months without matches to think about, talk about, watch and respond to as the dark days and long nights drift into the distance. Yes, there are England winter tours and a litany of franchise T20 leagues but they don’t quite match up...

Season’s Reflections: The Pain of Rain

Rain is perennially a part of watching English cricket. Save for a week or two during the summer when the country experiences a heatwave, all other weeks will involve precipitation, whether it arrives or not. Unlike countries such as Australia and India, where the likelihood of perpetual sunshine can almost be guaranteed, English cricket forever...

View from Afar

The beautiful Irish brogue was the clincher. It’s a bit of a cliché, a very big cliché, particularly as Ireland features regional accents akin to every other language on the globe but the unmistakeable lilts prove particularly easy on the ear, much like the Antipodean equivalent of Jeremy Coney. One imagines that to the denizens...

Walking a Mile in their Shoes

Stroll around the perimeter of a county cricket match, first-class or national, and occasionally you are likely to stumble across an individual sat akin to an artist, face looming over a sizeable book, pens and pencils gathered close at hand and a myriad of dots, lines, symbols, numbers and names written neatly and precisely into...