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
The Triple Effervescence
With the passing of Sir Everton Weekes in early July, cricket lost the last survivor of perhaps its greatest and most iconic of all batting … Read More
The Lord’s Test
There it is, in the diary: Thursday 25 June, Lord’s. I had two tickets for each of the first four days of the Test against … Read More
Opening Up
Opening batsmen are different; there are no two ways about it. It is obvious why they are different. Opening the batting presents very particular challenges. … 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
Here Comes the Sun
We’re now in mid-May, and, if all was right in the world, the West Indians ought to be arriving in England for their three-Test tour. … Read More
Dean Park, Bournemouth, 3 May 1970
Wisden arrived this week. Of course one always has to wait a little while for it in Singapore, but wherever you are the arrival of … Read More
Vinoo Mankad
This is a chapter from The Indian Masters, published originally in 2015 The 2004 edition of Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanack has a full page listing those … 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
Little and Large
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
Who is the Fairest of Them All?
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