Cricket
Review: The Test by Simon Jones and Jon Hotten
A truly great Ashes series leaves a glow in the memory that is forever golden. The greatest of all took place ten years ago, and gripped the nation in a way that cricket has never […]
Read MoreTaking on the Vatican at cricket
The Vatican is not traditionally known as a hotbed of cricketing talent, so a team in holy orders shouldn’t prove too much for a touring XI of authors from the UK, should it? Not so, […]
Read MoreThe myths of cricket origins
The summer of 1912 was one of the wettest on record. Month after month, rain lashed the cricket pitches of England. Sydney Barnes, whose 69 wickets came that season at a cost of just over […]
Read MoreAlastair Cook: my batting coach
What can the England captain teach an amateur cricketer most recently humiliated by a teenage leg-spinner? Read the full article on the Financial Times website
Read MoreOn not being good at cricket
For historian and hopeless sportsman Tom Holland, cricket meant ‘tedium, interspersed with the odd moment of raw terror’. Until the day he watched Botham’s Ashes heroics and was utterly converted. Read the full article […]
Read MoreKevin Pietersen as epic hero
In this extract from The Nightwatchman, historian Tom Holland contends that, amid all the tawdry tattle, it is worth remembering the times Pietersen had us marvelling at his brilliance. Read the full article on […]
Read MoreReview: Squeezing the Orange by Henry Blofeld
There can be a strong strain of self-parody in even the greatest commentators. When Henry Blofeld describes the progress of a pigeon in his inimitably plummy tones, or greets a visiting Ocker to the commentary […]
Read MoreExplaining cricket to America
The American series “30 Rock” has been airing in the U.K. for several years now, and most of it carries perfectly well across the pond. But comedy depends on context, and I was surely not […]
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