Suthar has taken seventeen wickets in two Tests, and India’s spin pecking order already looks different from how it did in June. His 10/131 in Galle forced selectors to confront what his 6/33 debut against Afghanistan only hinted at. Axar Patel sits outside the XI, Jadeja now shares the workload instead of carrying it alone, […]
Guyana Amazon Warriors and Barbados Tridents sit best placed right now, both unbeaten while five of the other seven sides have already dropped multiple games along the way. Neither side has actually reached the halfway point of their league campaign yet, either. As of August 20, teams have played between two and five of roughly […]
Mushfiqur mentors a dressing room built almost entirely of players who grew up watching him bat. Tanzid Hasan, Jaker Ali and debutant Amite Hasan have a combined fraction of his caps between them, and each has pointed to him directly as the reason Test cricket suddenly feels worth committing to. That influence is not accidental […]
Fernando has taken 93 Test wickets in 27 matches at an average of 26.75, numbers that would headline global bowling conversations for almost any other nation. Yet outside Sri Lanka, his name rarely comes up. Sri Lanka’s own bowling coach has admitted the team is living through what he called an era of slow decline, […]
Matt Renshaw’s recall for the second Test in Mackay makes him the seventh player tried alongside Usman Khawaja at the top of the order in just over two years. Jake Weatherald, discarded after a single Test, is only the latest name discarded in a search that keeps coming up empty. Renshaw’s return proves the selectors […]
A nine-wicket demolition in Darwin was already one of the great upsets in Test cricket history, but history alone will not be enough this time around. In three bilateral series against this opponent since 2003, the tourists have never once turned a Test win into a series victory, including the last time they managed it […]
Ollie Pope has lost England’s number three spot more often than any specialist batter in the Bazball era, and now a third player in as many years is stepping in. Jacob Bethell filled in twice, scoring a maiden century in Sydney during his second stint, before injury ruled him out of the Pakistan series. Jordan […]
Jadeja reached the landmark in Galle, becoming just the fourth cricketer in history and the second Indian after Kapil Dev to pair 4000 Test runs with 350 Test wickets. He got there in his 90th Test, faster than Kapil, Botham or Vettori managed the same double. The milestone arrived mid-spell against Sri Lanka, with three […]
Pakistan have generally had the talent to compete with England on English soil, but a single passage of play keeps costing them the series. It happened at Old Trafford in 2020, at Edgbaston in 2010, and in smaller ways throughout the 2016 and 2018 tours. Thirty years on from their last series win, in 1996, […]
Because every single franchise managed to find a non-gambling partner before it ever needed the fallback option at all. The Hundred’s board had actually voted in May to allow betting companies as a strict, closely conditioned last resort, but a late scramble for front-of-shirt deals meant all eight teams signed non-gambling sponsors before the tournament’s […]
If the players walk away, the model doesn’t work. Cricket Australia’s self-determination framework only functions because every state assumed the Australian Cricketers’ Association would eventually sign off on a revised pay deal, and that assumption broke on the eve of the crucial June meeting. Six states agreed in principle to decide their own privatisation timelines, […]