Thursday, May 31, 2007

Second test reactions

Pieterson - awesome. Although I have to note that if he'd made a princely TWO, WI would still have followed on AND lost by an innings.

Sidebottom - inspired pick. And I hope Harmison and Plunkett were shamed into understanding their failings.

Vaughan - great comeback!

Harmison - is it just me, or does he bowl better for Vaughan.

Flintoff - apparently unlikely to be fit to bowl in a four person attack for the forseeable future... That's not fit, as far as I'm concerned, period. None of the present batsmen deserve to be dropped, so... sorry Freddy.

Friday, May 18, 2007

There are two types of starts to a cricket career...

...as discussed with my good friend Jeff yesterday.

There are those who step up onto the big stage, and go "whoa, f***! what am I doing here? Help!". And never really get to grips with it, even if they're given allowance for first-time nerves. Classic examples - Graeme Hick. Mark Ramprakash. Ian Salisbury. Sadly, Owais Shah.

And then there are those whose whole demeanour says 'This is where I'm meant to be. Bring. It. On.'

I think, over the past two days, we've seen a couple of players who look born to be up there. Alistair Cook and Matt Prior.