The former England batsman Ian Bell has announced his retirement from first-class cricket at the end of this slightly unreal 2020 season; (not that we … Read More

Is Sam Curran in your best England Test eleven? Well all right, twelve? Er, thirteen? Selection is a strange business but few cricketers demonstrate its … Read More

This is not a history of close fielding; that will have to come later. This is more in the nature of an apology. I always … Read More

A number of friends – some not even cricketing friends really – alerted me to the passing, a couple of weeks ago, of the former … Read More

My most recent post, on the little masters Tendulkar and Gavaskar, and the not so little Kohli, generated such a wave of interest – there … Read More

I write this on Sachin Tendulkar’s 47th birthday. He made his Test debut, against Pakistan in Karachi, a month before the fall of the Berlin Wall. … Read More

I remember listening to an interview with a batsman – a right-handed batsman, I just can’t remember who it was – who was struck by … Read More

Who was the greater bowler, Muttiah Muralitharan or Shane Warne?  Such questions are almost impossible to answer. This is obviously the case with cricketers from … Read More

The great Pakistan leg-spinner Abdul Qadir died last week. This article about him first appeared in my book, The Pakistani Masters. “Mummy, I want to … Read More

Whatever happens in the first Ashes Test at Edgbaston – England are slightly ahead on points, as it were, as I write this before the … Read More

There are many worse places than Singapore to be a cricket person. You can play; there are some local leagues. You can hobnob with a … Read More

“Tom Graveney was the James Vince of his day.” Discuss. Ridiculous, I hear you cry. Graveney was a master batsman, one of only 25 to … Read More