The general consensus of opinion seems to be that the highly anticipated Players Draft for ‘The Hundred’ was an underwhelming affair characterised by a series of selections and omissions described, variously, as ‘strange’, ‘unexpected’ and ‘hard to understand’. Chris Gayle and Lasith Malinga’s names were left in the hat, undrawn, as were those of Kagiso […]
Reassuring a cricketer about his value to the team is not the same as making him undroppable. The former is a good thing; the latter can have the opposite effect. Few players are indispensable to the teams they play in, and even when they reach that status it doesn’t last forever. Not usually, anyway. Jacques […]
Back in the days when Gary Kirsten toured under the captaincy of Kepler Wessels and Hansie Cronje he would occasionally yearn for a day off, especially after four or five weeks on the road when it was abundantly obvious that the majority of the squad were going through the motions in the nets and gaining […]
Faf du Plessis was ebullient in his praise for the senior players who “put their hands up” during the first Test against India describing Dean Elgar’s 160 and Quinton de Kock’s 111 as innings which “gave the team great confidence and belief” and said that “scoring over 400 on the subcontinent is never an easy […]
For a contest between the runaway first ranked team in the world and the third, the Test series between India and South Africa, which begins in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday, has not received the attention it might have in different circumstances. But that could change very quickly if the tourists achieve their objective in “throwing some […]
Why would a white, 52-year-old cricket writer from a privileged background, with a wife and two teenage daughters, want to work in Kabul, Afghanistan? That’s the question – and the answer. It is still difficult to comprehend the magnitude of the Afghan cricket story, and its extraordinary result. Just over a dozen years ago they […]
Back in the early 1990s a well-known and popular Cape Town delicatessen boasted a large, painted sign on the wall outside advertising “Imported, canned peaches.” It was an extraordinary thing on many levels and never failed to grab my attention every time I walked or drove past. But it never enticed me inside. Quite the […]
Whichever prism of experience you view the game through, whatever it is you wish to glean from it, it is important to understand different perspectives even if you cannot relate directly to them. At least, it is important for long-serving reporters. South Africa play India in three T20 Internationals starting on Sunday and, for a […]
It’s hard to keep up with the number of domestic T20 leagues around the world these days but the number is certainly over 20 – including the State leagues in India, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh etc. Another was scheduled to start this week but the Euro T20 Slam was stillborn leaving cricket fans in Scotland, Ireland […]
Remember ‘the line’? We haven’t heard much about it in the last year or so. The one which the Australian cricket team never crossed – the one they could draw wherever they liked to demarcate acceptable behaviour from the unacceptable. Before ‘the line’ cricketers were guided by ‘Mother Cricket’ and the respect (or fear) they […]
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