Worth trying, and every county has the chance to win the title, but not worth perpetuating. The Conference system in the first half of the championship, followed by three divisions. Sussex’s Jack Carson is a fine exception to this rule, having grown up in Northern Ireland, safe from academies. These are not spin bowlers they are bowling slow cutters. Their body leans forward at the same angle from the start of their run-up to the end of their followthrough, and all they use is their arm and fingers. They put no body at all into their delivery and therefore have no flight. The proliferation of finger-spinners who could have been churned out on a factory production-line. Then, lo and behold, the over-rate might increase to 90 per day, spectators might get their money’s worth at last - and Moeen Ali would not have retired in his prime. They were always used for at least a one-day game earlier in the season, to get some wear and tear. Moral of story: forget about Test pitches looking pristine. What sort of balance is 90% pace v 10% spin? Out of the 67 wickets which England took, seven fell to spin of the 67 wickets which India took, six fell to spin.
My cricket app series#
Even in the four-Test series starting in August spin was marginalised. England did not bother to play a spinner in their two Tests against New Zealand, nor did New Zealand in their World Test Championship final against India. Cricket is about playing against everyone who asks for a game, the only condition being that it is not one-sided. Remember obnoxious kids who would suddenly take their bat and ball home, thus stopping everyone else playing? India were like that, when they pulled out of the Old Trafford Test and England were like that when they pulled out of their tour to Pakistan. Imagine two Tests being broadcast simultaneously. Evidence: the climax of the county championship when Lancashire and Hampshire knocked each other out at Liverpool while Warwickshire nipped in at Edgbaston. Simultaneous matches have an added excitement of their own, which should be exploited. New Zealand won in cloudy and damp conditions at Southampton akin to Dunedin, whereas India might well have prevailed if there had been two more Tests in different conditions.īetter still, let the four top countries meet in a month-long league in which each plays the other three (thereby almost every Test country is in contention throughout the two-year cycle, instead of some having nothing to play for).
Given the limitations imposed by Covid, the inaugural event worked well, but a single Test match - albeit extended to six days - is not sufficient basis on which to decide a crown. That is how the Women’s Hundred made 2021 the year when women’s cricket took off. And the biggest factor behind its success - apart from the huge investment which no other format of the English game has ever enjoyed - was the fact that every fixture was a double-header. Like the format or not, it was more of a success than a failure because it attracted a new and younger audience to cricket grounds. Cricket was on the road to becoming a middle-class male niche sport in affluent suburbs and towns henceforth it could become the nation’s summer sport for males once again and, for the first time, females. This impact on cricket as a sport in Britain should be truly game-changing. Infinitely more diverse too than England Women’s cricket had been. It had been almost minimal, successful though the England Women’s team had been, but the Hundred made it take off and enter the public consciousness as a fun sport with a future and dozens of livelihoods to be made.
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