Posted by: AM on: August 11, 2009
On the eve of the third ashes test at Edgbaston, the England captain Andrew Strauss gave what in retrospect seems a hubristic hostage to fortune: Australia, he said, had lost their aura.
“The aura came from guys like Warne, McGrath, Hayden and Gilchrist”, Strauss smiled, toasting the success of the fifteen-year English strategy of waiting for [...]
Posted by: AM on: August 6, 2009
Our beautiful game is in grave danger. In the name of the global war on drugs, a zealous bureaucracy fitted to the very different world of athletics threatens to seize control of cricket. We will ultimately pay for it with the loss of great players for procedural improprieties – WADA, remember, wanted Shane Warne banned [...]
Posted by: AM on: January 6, 2009
High noon. Pietersen and Moores. Leather and willow. At stake, the short term future of a middling cricket team. Who will be left standing? Captain? Coach? Neither?
It doesn’t really matter. And not just because cricket doesn’t matter (don’t be daft), but because the real problem with the England team points in a very different [...]
Posted by: AM on: March 4, 2008
Hilary Clinton take note. Andrew Strauss’s campaign to get back into the England team has been little short of genius, more Karl Rove than Mark Penn. He has a winning strategy, built on a few rock solid principles of political campaigning: Spin the facts, to cloud the vision of the reality-based community, and appeal to [...]
Posted by: AM on: January 20, 2008
India brought Australia’s 16 match winning streak wonderfully to an end. Tendulkar and Laxman batted superbly. Ishant Sharma’s working over of Ponting was extraordinary, as good as Flintoff’s over to him at Edgbaston in 2005. Australia played well too, and it was a great test match.
My utterly superficial contribution to this momentous occasion is to [...]
