• England v Pakistan – a Magical Mystery Tour

    England

     The relationship between England and Pakistan as cricketing nations has always been “interesting”.  Things started to go wrong almost as…

  • When the Numbers Don’t Matter

    Some Cricketers

    Is Sam Curran in your best England Test eleven? Well all right, twelve? Er, thirteen? Selection is a strange business…

  • The Triple Effervescence

    Hail and Farewell

    With the passing of Sir Everton Weekes in early July, cricket lost the last survivor of perhaps its greatest and…

  • The Lord’s Test

    About the Game

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

    Lord's at dusk
  • Opening Up

    Batting

    Opening batsmen are different; there are no two ways about it. It is obvious why they are different. Opening the…

  • Many a Slip

    Some Cricketers

    This is not a history of close fielding; that will have to come later. This is more in the nature…

    Bill Pavilion End, Bill Ricquier's Cricket Views
  • The Smack of Firm Government

    Some Cricketers

    A number of friends – some not even cricketing friends really – alerted me to the passing, a couple of…

  • Here Comes the Sun

    Some Cricket Matches

    We’re now in mid-May, and, if all was right in the world, the West Indians ought to be arriving in…

  • Dean Park, Bournemouth, 3 May 1970

    Some Cricket Matches

    Wisden arrived this week. Of course one always has to wait a little while for it in Singapore, but wherever…

  • Vinoo Mankad

    Some Cricketers

    This is a chapter from The Indian Masters, published originally in 2015 The 2004 edition of Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanack has…

  • And Then There Were Twelve

    Some Cricketers

    My most recent post, on the little masters Tendulkar and Gavaskar, and the not so little Kohli, generated such a…

  • Little and Large

    Some Cricketers

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