Sunil Narine: a loss to Test cricket

Sunil Narine is a limited overs bowler. That he will remain, for the rest of his career. He hasn’t played a First Class game for five years and he won’t play one ever again. Instead, he bowls four overs a game in the IPL, the CPL, the PSL, the BPL, the BBL; all over the…

Amelia Kerr, leg-spin is more important

Amelia Kerr first came to notice as a 14-year-old leg-spinner. That in and of itself is quite something. The video on YouTube has over 135,000 views and shows a precocious talent, flighting her leg-breaks, and ripping a few googlies in the domestic T20 final in New Zealand. Three years later, she was a 17-year-old starting…

Round-Up 26/06/2018 or How Bess repaid Cook

The ongoing Test match between West Indies and Sri Lanka may be a tightly fought low scoring tussle with plenty of excitement but to this point, only two of the 29 wickets to fall has gone to a spinner (as I write), so let’s turn our attention to the County Championship. It was the first…

England ODI spin ladder

As we reach the end of a well deserved and thoroughly entertaining ODI series between England and Australia, it’s easy for English thoughts (such as my own) to fixate on the batting. Bairstow, Roy, Hales, Morgan, Buttler, and more were superb over the series, but England’s spin was just as good. How good? Well, Rashid…

Round-up 20/06/2018 or ODI spin twins love runs on the board

While all the focus is on England’s phenomenal white ball batting, a couple of interesting performances from spinners on both sides could slide under the radar. That’s where I come in. While England were bludgeoning their way to nearly 500, Ashton Agar took 1 for 70 to be one of the main reasons they didn’t…

Round-Up 19/06/2018 or Dawson does his thing

A draw then, for West Indies and Sri Lanka, and just the one wicket for Akila Dananjaya in West Indies’ second innings. Seam dominated the Test match, with Bishoo taking no wickets, and Dananjaya just one in each innings. Dananjaya looked good at the beginning of his spell and got the wicked of Dowrich with…

Round-Up: 18/06/2018 or How Bishoo got belted.

Not much of a day for spinners today. Devendra Bishoo got a bit of tap in the Second Test between West Indies and Sri Lanka, bowling 11 wicketless overs for 58. As usual, I was struck by the lack of variation. Bishoo really has nothing other than his leg-break, I didn’t see a single googly…

Rashid Khan’s grip

Let’s talk about Rashid Khan’s grip. Maybe I haven’t been paying attention, but from most of the commentary and media coverage of the young leg-spinner, it seems that he’s an orthodox leggie who bowls quickly and with a well-disguised googly. Not so. I clipped this screenshot off TV coverage of Afghanistan’s maiden Test match, and…

Adil Rashid’s sisyphean task

In Ancient Greek mythology, Sisyphus was said to have been punished by the gods for his craftiness to roll a rock up a hill forever, only when he reached the top to see it roll back down again. Adil Rashid did more than roll the ball on his first two days of Test cricket, but…

Ajmal is a genius

The 90s and the first half of the 00s were dominated, spin wise, by two geniuses. One was a genius of the mind, all smoke and mirrors. The other was a genius of the body, with a super flexing shoulder and wrist that fizzed and turned the ball more than any other before him. If…