Author: Bill Ricquier

  • The cunning spinner cricket almost forgot

    3 November 2020
    I made (at least) two misstatements in my piece on John Reid. The first was that New Zealand’s Tests against…
  • John Reid, New Zealand's indomitable all-rounder

    18 October 2020
    John Reid, the former New Zealand captain, who died last week at the age of 92, was one of the…
  • An honour few would begrudge Darren Gough

    12 October 2020
    Whatever one’s views on Britain’s honours system, nobody is going to begrudge the award of an MBE to the former…
  • A sudden loss, and a fearless batsman recalled

    28 September 2020
    The cricket world was shocked to learn of the sudden death of the former Australian batsman Dean Jones at the…
  • Ian Bell bows out, loyal to the last

    17 September 2020
    The former England batsman Ian Bell has announced his retirement from first-class cricket at the end of this slightly unreal…
  • An unsponsored Test with much still at stake

    13 August 2020
    What should we make of the first (unsponsored) Test between England and Pakistan at Old Trafford? Of course the first…
  • A fixture forever unpredictable and fraught

    8 August 2020
     The relationship between England and Pakistan as cricketing nations has always been “interesting”.  Things started to go wrong almost as…
  • Sam Curran, and the selector's stranger arts

    30 July 2020
    Is Sam Curran in your best England Test eleven? Well all right, twelve? Er, thirteen? Selection is a strange business…
  • With Weekes gone, the great three Ws are complete

    13 July 2020
    With the passing of Sir Everton Weekes in early July, cricket lost the last survivor of perhaps its greatest and…
  • Tickets in the diary, and a summer lost

    20 June 2020
    There it is, in the diary: Thursday 25 June, Lord’s. I had two tickets for each of the first four…