theoldbatsman.blogspot.com
The Old Batsman: March 2015
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The consolations of a cricketing life. Saturday, 21 March 2015. KP: The One Who Knocks. Amid the power and the glory of Breaking Bad. Came the moment in season four when Walter White at last articulated to Skylar, his panicking wife, his transformation from terminally ill middle-aged chemistry teacher to badass drug kingpin. Are we in danger? She asks him. Are you going to answer a knock at the door and get shot? I'm not in danger, Skylar." Walt rages at the end of one of TV's great monologues. There is ...
theoldbatsman.blogspot.com
The Old Batsman: May 2014
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The consolations of a cricketing life. Saturday, 24 May 2014. One (thousand) run(s) in May. Last season was probably my worst ever with the bat. I remember clearly driving home from the final game feeling relieved that it was all over. I've been long reconciled to the idea that I'm not going to get any better. But I didn't really plan on getting much worse. Either. A sort of gentle decline which nonetheless contained flashes of old glories and was compensated by extra nous. Was more what I had in mind.
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The Old Batsman: September 2014
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The consolations of a cricketing life. Sunday, 28 September 2014. After one of my worst seasons ever with the bat last year, I began 2014 by scoring one run in May. Compadres for all-time, me and that run; a prod to extra cover for a harassed single.) Something had to give. Maybe it would be me. I just wasn't sure any more, and batting has always demanded a kind of certainty - of footwork, of judgment, of many things that I was no longer certain about. Oh come on.' I said. What's it going to hit? So I ri...
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The Old Batsman: June 2015
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The consolations of a cricketing life. Monday, 22 June 2015. No one knows who they were, or. What they were doing.'. So sang Spinal Tap. Of the druids, and driving past the neolithic majesty of Silbury Hill on the way to Avebury CC, with bleary revellers, blissed-out new agers, wide-eyed truth seekers and bedraggled hippies wading through waist-high grass, strewn in road-side ditches and crashed out by camper vans, it was obvious that our prehistoric past retains all of its mystical pull. Close your eyes...
theoldbatsman.blogspot.com
The Old Batsman: January 2015
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The consolations of a cricketing life. Thursday, 1 January 2015. The Seventh Annual OB Innings Of The Year Award: Put Out Your Bats. The Macksville banana farm must have seemed like a long way away. He'd probably never been anywhere this cold. What struck me immediately was how small he was - this was the guy carting Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel for boundary after boundary? In Sydney Grade cricket. As Test cricket returned, it was as if grief had only one true expression, one currency - runs, and in parti...
theoldbatsman.blogspot.com
The Old Batsman: July 2015
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The consolations of a cricketing life. Friday, 31 July 2015. Darren Stevens has a day out. He was way too good, and knew way too much for them. Kent went from 111 to 220 in just under eight overs. Stevens got 90 and a raucous, affectionate standing ovation as he walked off. It was deserved, not just for that night, but for all of the effort over all of the years. Subscribe to: Posts (Atom). They've come to watch me bat, sir, not you umpire. View my complete profile. Darren Stevens has a day out. Four acc...
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The Old Batsman: April 2014
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The consolations of a cricketing life. Monday, 28 April 2014. Who was the last great batsman that England produced? Is there any greater pleasure in the game than watching Virat Kohli bat? Only one, perhaps, and that's watching AB de Villiers bat. This blog has often dwelt on the emerging state of the New Batsmanship, its first intimations coming with the cult of Sehwagology. And its immortal, irreducible credo 'see ball, hit ball', and on through its power-fuelled expansion: Gayle's vision. Ian Bell has...
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The Old Batsman: August 2014
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The consolations of a cricketing life. Saturday, 23 August 2014. How many problems have England actually solved? Somewhere in the Multiverse is a reality where Ravi Jadeja held on to Alastair Cook's tremulous edge at the Ageas Bowl, the England captain walked off with 15 to his name and failure dark by his side. His team took another beating, and now he will spend the winter 'working on his batting' at Essex while Eoin Morgan leads the ODI side to the World Cup. The captaincy and succession. Imagine the ...
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The Old Batsman: July 2014
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The consolations of a cricketing life. Tuesday, 29 July 2014. I have been playing in cricket matches since I was eleven years old. During that time I have seen most things, and seen them often enough to realise that the game's genius lies in its quotidian variations, its subtle, almost infinite changes to a grand and familiar theme. Imagine my delight when I discovered, halfway through writing this, that his first ball was captured on film. You can see it here. Wednesday, 16 July 2014. It is his centenar...
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The Old Batsman: December 2014
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The consolations of a cricketing life. Friday, 19 December 2014. Yesterday in (or is it at? The Big Bash, Kevin Pietersen stepped back deep in his crease to make an angle and hit a delivery from Shaun Tait timed at 149.4kph over wide mid off for a one-bounce four, using a full swing of the bat. Not a lot of people can do that. And not a lot of the people that can do it are eligible to play for England. Such is our loss. It is the only Test-playing nation not to have capped an ODI player 200 times. It's o...