I wrote about Darren Stevens a few years ago (The Old Fox, July 2018: I think it still holds up). Since then his career has … Read More
One Size Fits – Almost – All
When did (male) professional cricketers start to look the same? Of course I don’t mean that literally. Notwithstanding the panoply of helmets, pads and other … Read More
Three of a Kind
Joe Root did something very special at the first Test between India and England at Chennai. He scored a century in his hundredth Test. In … Read More
Courage Under Fire: John Edrich
Cricket people love debating whether a particular player is great or simply very good. “Great” tends to be over-used but people engaged in this sort … Read More
The Sly Old Fox: Clarrie Grimmett
I made (at least) two misstatements in my piece on John Reid. The first was that New Zealand’s Tests against England in 1949 were played … Read More
A Gong for The Dazzler
Whatever one’s views on Britain’s honours system, nobody is going to begrudge the award of an MBE to the former Yorkshire and England cricketer Darren … Read More
A Victorian Legend: Dean Jones, 1961-2020
The cricket world was shocked to learn of the sudden death of the former Australian batsman Dean Jones at the age of 59. He suffered … Read More
One-County Man
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
When the Numbers Don’t Matter
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
Many a Slip
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
The Smack of Firm Government
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
And Then There Were Twelve
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