Gryllidae Cricket

  The 2025 men's Test English summer has all the makings of a surrealist dream: Familiar enough to be recognisable but with enough peculiarities to make it all seem uncomfortable. Zoom in far enough and the last ball of the Lord’s tests captures the whole summer, with a tailender playing a textbook middle-of-the-bat defence that falls at his feet, spins one way, then another, to trickle on to the stumps. Shots from the middle of the bat shouldn’t bowl someone, but they do in this series. Jasprit Bumrah is the best bowler in the world, but his personal series in 0-2. India have out-played England for most of the summer, but are still somehow losing. Yet the oddest part of this summer has been the evolution of BazBall, to something like traditional cricket. English crowds have enjoyed three summers of BazBall and while there were murmurings the approach was maturing, BazBall can’t mature as it won't be BazBall anymore .  The McCullum era's ethos is to be where your feet ar...

In the latest Ashes hype, Steve Smith once again reminded the world that while Jofra Archer hit him on the head (ruling the Australian out with concussion), he didn’t do what really hurts: getting him out. This idea that a potentially life-altering concussion injury is preferable to a cricket dismissal is, to me, symptomatic of the macho approach to cricket generally, and bouncers in particular. The physical threat of bouncers has visceral appeal but people putting themselves up for physical injury for the sake of entertainment makes me uneasy. Bouncers are part of cricket’s mythos: Viv Richards swaggering out to hook bowlers with just a cap for protection is undeniably cool; Bodyline is a touchstone of cricket history; and the iconic West Indies bowlers defined men's cricket in the 70s & 80s. Robin Smith acrobatically avoiding a bouncer at Old Trafford, 1995, Getty Images .  Taking enjoyment out of what is potentially life-ending moment for a batter feels a little gladiat...

Kane Williamson's eight Test dismissals in England indicate a trend of dismissals by mistakes, not a deficient technique, and as errors are by nature avoidable, he could well excel in the upcoming England series and against India in the World Test Championship final. A rare thing: a modern sports superstar who inspires little animus. From the outside, Kane Williamson is everything a non-Kiwi fan wants a New Zealand cricketer to be with his batting is based on class, watching the ball to the last second, playing with soft hands, and building runs via touch, not brute force. As a personality, he is as an understated, softly-spoken megastar who is deserving of a place among the modern greats as you're likely to see based on his 7114 Test runs, averaging over 54, with 24 centuries; these impressive figures have grown since he slipped effortlessly into being a calm (what else?) and tactically-astute captain. Williamson averages 62 as New Zealand captain which is the best figure for ...

Cricket, and only cricket, could spend the best part of a century agonising over something as straightforward as a legal run out. Seventy years after Vinoo Mankad dismissed the backing-up Bill Brown in Sydney, the Mankad’s continuing controversial reputation is symptomatic of game’s unhelpful fixation with the ‘spirit of cricket’. Vinoo Mankad’s name had become a synonymous with unfair play, but he should be remembered as an innovator not a villain. Somehow the act of running a batter out with the Mankad has become seen to be disreputable and something that is certainly not cricket . After all, a batter is just wandering a little way towards to safety of the striker’s popping crease  17.68 metres away , which is hardly a crime against cricket, is it? Yet with the Mankad and the whole notion of 'spirit', the devil is in the detail.  Where do we mark the ‘line’ of encroachment acceptability for non-strikers trying to gain an advantage? Five centimetres is probably fine; one metr...