almostnopoint.blogspot.com
Very Silly Point: July 2014
http://almostnopoint.blogspot.com/2014_07_01_archive.html
Tuesday, 15 July 2014. Fletcher's idea comes to fruition, and Cooks protégé upstages him. Just after Duncan Fletcher took over as England coach in 1999, England’s tail reached its nadir. Caddick, Mullally, Tufnell, and Giddens. A tail with Tufnell at number ten is something poor indeed. Paul Collingwood nudged Monty Panesar to a couple of match saving innings. Marcus Trescothick coached Matthew Hoggard into a man who, with Ashley Giles, saw England through to an Ashes Test win. It must be a little bitter...
almostnopoint.blogspot.com
Very Silly Point: November 2014
http://almostnopoint.blogspot.com/2014_11_01_archive.html
Tuesday, 11 November 2014. Tom Latham shows the value of simplicity. It was Bill Shankly who said “Football is a simple game complicated by idiots.” Like all truisms, there’s more to it than that, and if you substituted football for cricket you’d get blank stares from some. Surely cricket is complicated in and of itself, they’d say. He brought up his century with a shimmy down the wicket and punch of the ball down the ground for four. It took a fantastic ball to get rid of him, Rahat Ali reverse swin...
almostnopoint.blogspot.com
Very Silly Point: New Zealand are magic
http://almostnopoint.blogspot.com/2015/03/new-zealand-are-magic.html
Tuesday, 24 March 2015. New Zealand are magic. Trent Boult rips a ball past the outside edge. Matt Henry jars one into the splice. Grant Elliott backhands one past the stumps. Brendon McCullum chases a ball down like it’s a baby in a pram rolling towards a cliff. New Zealand are at Eden Park, but it feels like the Colosseum. Brendon McCullum’s natural leadership style has dovetailed with the current ODI playing conditions. As teams have put more emphasis on building through the innings and expl...Either ...
almostnopoint.blogspot.com
Very Silly Point: Selfishness and West Indies batting
http://almostnopoint.blogspot.com/2015/01/selfishness-and-west-indies-batting.html
Monday, 5 January 2015. Selfishness and West Indies batting. It’s clear that the West Indies don’t have a strong and united team. Perhaps the only thing they’re united on is abandoning tours. In India they left in body, in South Africa today they left in spirit. Are the West Indies’ best batsmen, the men who should be grafting runs, selfish? Next, Chanderpaul took an ill-advised single off the fifth ball of that over, giving Shannon Gabriel possibly a whole over against Simon Harmer. Again Chanderpau...
almostnopoint.blogspot.com
Very Silly Point: October 2014
http://almostnopoint.blogspot.com/2014_10_01_archive.html
Friday, 10 October 2014. The cricket ground and the ballpark. Oriole Park at Camden Yards: a great venue for baseball. Like most from the cricket watching world, my initial view of baseball was of a game that was so far removed from cricket, an Americanisation of the bat and ball game that doesn’t come close to the complexity of the greatest sport in the world. The 2014 MLB season is the first of mine as a baseball fan. My views have changed… to an extent. Yet, most grounds in both sports have some kind ...
almostnopoint.blogspot.com
Very Silly Point: Papua New Guinea enter the ‘big time’
http://almostnopoint.blogspot.com/2014/11/papua-new-guinea-enter-big-time.html
Sunday, 9 November 2014. Papua New Guinea enter the ‘big time’. It doesn’t look like the big time. Tony Ireland Stadium in Townsville is an out-ground for Queensland, and used for the occasional international A game. It’s a sparse ground, and the matchup between Papua New Guinea and Hong Kong hasn’t attracted many spectators sitting on the grass banks, and only a few in the single stand. Aside from the players, the PNG kit is quite something. Black, with red and yellow trim, and an fantastic black ca...
almostnopoint.blogspot.com
Very Silly Point: The new spin kings of the Caribbean
http://almostnopoint.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-new-spin-kings-of-caribbean.html
Sunday, 12 April 2015. The new spin kings of the Caribbean. It’s six years since England last toured the West Indies for a Test series and since then the ongoing development in West Indies regional cricket has continued to be towards the spinners. Thirty years ago every regional team had two or three decent pacers, now each plays at least two spinners. Times have changed. The two to have dropped out of the reckoning are Shane Shillingford and Sunil Narine. Both have dealt with suspect actions and bot...
almostnopoint.blogspot.com
Very Silly Point: Tom Latham shows the value of simplicity
http://almostnopoint.blogspot.com/2014/11/tom-latham-shows-value-of-simplicity.html
Tuesday, 11 November 2014. Tom Latham shows the value of simplicity. It was Bill Shankly who said “Football is a simple game complicated by idiots.” Like all truisms, there’s more to it than that, and if you substituted football for cricket you’d get blank stares from some. Surely cricket is complicated in and of itself, they’d say. He brought up his century with a shimmy down the wicket and punch of the ball down the ground for four. It took a fantastic ball to get rid of him, Rahat Ali reverse swin...
almostnopoint.blogspot.com
Very Silly Point: March 2015
http://almostnopoint.blogspot.com/2015_03_01_archive.html
Sunday, 29 March 2015. McCullum’s three balls. Take a ball Brendon. Surely? It was over the moment the ball hit the stumps. New Zealand have come back before, but their head had been cut off. It was not to be at the MCG, not against Australia this time. McCullum gone: game gone. Will those three balls play over and over again in Brendon McCullum’s head? Then against Australia he came up against Mitchell Starc for the first time in the tournament. Brendon McCullum was Starc’s first Test wicket&#...Round o...