Category Archives: English cricket

November 11, 2017 · 8:51 am

Mellawa’s Inside/Outside View of Sri Lankan Cricket

Andrew Fidel Fernando, reviewing Ranjan Mellawa’s Wind Behind the Willows… for ESPNcricinfo, http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/21203302/ranjan-mellawa-winds-willows

First, allow me to lay out a bias: I was probably always going to like this one. Sri Lanka does not, alas, produce a wealth of cricket books. Where Ben Stokes already has a hardcover in circulation, Muttiah Muralitharan is yet to flog a 400-page grievance – the likes of which have recently become the prerogative of so many retired cricketers. (And of endured hardships, who could possibly have a greater store than Murali?)

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October 7, 2017 · 8:25 am

Test Cricket of A Different Kind, 1 November 1948

Srilal Fernando

This article appeared earlier in The Ceylankan, a quarterly produced by the Ceylon Research Society, a body of Lankan enthusiasts in Australia.

Sometime around 2001 a couple of autographs came up for sale at Christie’s auction house in London: they were of the visiting English women cricketers who played a match in Colombo against the Ceylon women in the first “test” of its kind in 1948. I was lucky to trace two of the test cricketers from the Ceylon team who now live in Victoria, Beverley Roberts (now Mrs Juriansz) and Enid (Gilly) Fernando. Incidentally Gilly is called Gilly after AER Gilligan the Australian cricketer and answers to no other name.

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September 24, 2017 · 2:08 pm

Sanga stirs Surrey Cricket Scene 2017

Having been presented with his honorary life membership of Surrey CCC, Kumar Sangakkara took to the stage to deliver a rousing speech that will live long in the memory of all present on the evening. Here it is in full:

First of all, with the honorary life membership; I think someone has read my mind. About three days ago I was thinking about whether I should ask for the chance to be a fee paying member at Surrey. When I received honorary life membership at the MCC I thought nothing could top that because that was something that was on my list but this, from Surrey, has actually topped that so thank you very much.

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September 5, 2017 · 1:52 pm

Brian Lara’s Cowdrey Lecture Revealing Reflections

George Dobell, courtesy of ESPNcricinfo, where the title is “Embarrassed by how West Indies played in the nineties – Lara”

Brian Lara has implored the top sides in world cricket “to ensure that the integrity of the game is upheld” and admitted there were times he was “truly embarrassed” by the behaviour of the West Indies side he represented.

Michael Holding kicks the stumps in anger Getty Images

Lara, delivering the MCC Spirt of Cricket Cowdrey lecture at Lord’s, not only called on batsmen to “walk” but suggested the leading sides had a responsibility to “show the way and lead the way” in which the game is played.And, despite the outstanding record of the West Indies sides of the 1980s and early 1990s, Lara felt they were occasions when the tactics they employed resulted in them “playing the game in a way it should never, ever be played.” Continue reading →

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August 31, 2017 · 9:51 am

Hope stands out in Outstanding West Indian Victory at Headingley

Mark Nicholas in ESPNcricinfo, August 2017, with the title reading “Hope, Headingley: A Miracle”

Impossible, simply impossible. In all of West Indies cricket history nothing can have been quite so gloriously scatty, unlikely, improbable and, yes, let’s go there, as impossible as the victory achieved by Jason Holder’s team at Headingley. Only one team stands above them on the list of fourth-innings run chases at this hotbed of Yorkshire cricket, and that little lot became known as the Invincibles and were led by Sir Donald Bradman.

Shai Hope–Getty Images

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August 14, 2017 · 2:33 pm

Remembering Peter Roebuck

Benjamin Golby courtesy of https://benjamingolby.bandcamp.com/track/in-memoriam-p-m-r ….. where the title reads In Memoriam – P.M.R.””

Peter Roebuck died on the 12th of November 2011. He is among a good many eminent men in cricket, including AE Stoddart, Albert Trott, Sid Barnes and Jack Iverson, to take their own lives. Given the wretched and mute circumstances in which these men died, it is to be hoped that, if there is some existence beyond this, they have there fared better.

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August 1, 2017 · 5:10 pm

David Hopps reviews England’s Decisive Win

David Hopps

The 100th Test match at The Oval concluded with a wonderful piece of theatre when Moeen Ali completed England’s victory in the third Test against South Africa with a hat-trick. It was the first hat-trick in a Test at The Oval and, even more remarkably, the first by an England spinner for 79 years. Quite a way to complete a 239-run win.

England might not have the most illustrious list of spin bowlers in the history of Test cricket, but they have had a number of highly regarded operators since Tom Goddard briefly brought a bore draw in Johannesburg to life on Boxing Day 1938, less than nine months before the outbreak of World War 2. Continue reading →

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July 25, 2017 · 4:04 am

Angelo Mathews: Highs and Lows … but still Potent

Andrew Fidel Fernando, courtesy of ESPNcricinfo, where the title reads “Can Mathews arrest batting slump?”

Angelo Mathews, 30 years old, former captain, once the owner of a fearsome average, now merely a very good one, potentially a great batsman still, but man, the last 18 months have not been kind. For a player of such indisputable quality, it has been a strange decline.Remember how he had been in 2014 – that last great year of Sri Lankan cricket – when out of nowhere, he hit a harvest so golden, so irrepressible, that he bludgeoned attacks into pulp, nurdled without relent, left no advertising board unstung by his boundary hits, and even when off the field, probably coughed up, sneezed and exhaled runs.

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June 13, 2017 · 3:55 pm

Rare Cricketing Images from Yesteryear: Bodyline

W M Woodfull of Australia ducks to avoid a rising ball from Harold Larwood of England during the Fourth Test match at Brisbane on the infamous ‘Bodyline’ Tour of Australia … Photo by Central Press/Getty Images

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May 26, 2017 · 3:18 pm

Sangakkara’s Picture of An Innings bests his Artistic Shadow

Michael Henderson, courtesy of The Times, May 20 2017, where the title reads“Sangakkara produces a picture of an innings to put Surrey on top”