After our magnificent win last night, I thought I would celebrate by hooking up the mobile keyboard to the phone and do a test post.
So my typing is slower than Ian Bell after 20 overs of last night’s innings but it is better than predictive text!
More later.
Being Outside Cricket 
A Test post? Don’t you realise we’re in the middle of a three-month World Cup? How dare you bring up Tests instead of concentrating on the pinnacle of cricket?!
PS predictive text is evil and should be eradicated.
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I blame Ian Bell.
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The new #TrottsFault?
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After our magnificent win last night – I’ve nailed the cat to the back of the kitchen door :0)
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ps – how does anyone know the speed of your typing from the message you leave on the page?
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If this is the First test -will your reply be the Second test and is it the beginning of a series – and does Giles Clarke know?
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More importantly, did Giles threaten to sue your socks off?
How does it feel to be outside “predictive text”?
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noted in dossier: he is not using a laptop
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Also noted. 230 characters (a minute) is the par score, but he falls short too often. Lord needs to do some upskilling, and improve the execution of his skills.
The keys are 12 mm by 8 mm, so he certainly needs to practice his key-pressing technique. Take advantage of the width!
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If this is a Test post, are you going to give a post Test post interview ? And is this Test post going to last five days ? I think we should be told.
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That should just be from “Ross”
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I was specially asked by JamesSilkDavey to make sure this post was permanently retained on a blog somewhere, so here goes:
Barnetboy 8h ago
What has happened to the England of 3 or 4 years ago?
NonOxbridgeColumnist [reply to] Barnetboy 6h ago
Well, they were whitewashed in the UAE and lost at home to South Africa; the opening batsman and captain resigned and joined the media; they won in India and everyone banged on about it for a year so no-one with any influence piped up about the earlier very serious defeats; they won the Ashes again but everyone turned on them for being dull and/or pissing on the pitch; Mitchell Johnson and Ryan Harris; the most reliable no.3 in a generation suffered from burnout/a stress-related illness and hasn’t played at the top level since; MG Johnson and RJ Harris; the best spinner in 35 years suffered an elbow injury and retired; Brad Haddin averaged 63 against England but, mysteriously, 8 [sic] against South Africa; the bowlers couldn’t get the Australian no.11 out once in five Tests; the country’s leading run-scorer across all formats was sacked; the coach resigned, was promoted and became a Phantom Menace figure; his failed predecessor and former boss came back in a sort of Putin/Medvedev arrangement; the batting coach was sacked; a highly promising young fast bowler went backwards; the form of the record-breaking captain and opener fell off a cliff; the form of the best wicket-keeper batsman in goodness knows how long fell off Everest *and* he had a four-inch tear in his Achilles; day 4 at Headingley 2014 klaxon; they lost at home to Sri Lanka for the first time ever; they won some Test matches against the worst touring side in a decade so everyone thought it was OK for the hopelessly out of touch captain to carry on in ODIs; he failed; he was finally put out of his misery when it was far too late to prepare adequately for the World Cup; his successor wasn’t much better if at all; a series of inexplicable Dexteresque decisions hampered the ODI side still further; and so here we are.
But apart from that…nothing much really.
Nineteen lines, less than one of which is devoted to you-know-who and you-know-what. Remarkable really, given that we’re a bunch of monomaniacal fringe idiots.
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It was nineteen lines in the box; it’s twenty now.
Link here:
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/feb/23/moeen-ali-century-england-stress-free-scotland-cricket-world-cup
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And a very good nineteen or twenty lines too…. blimey, though, when you write it out like that…. what a saga…
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….the collateral damage done to some very tallented players like Panesar, Compton, Carberry, Rankin, Kerrigan ….
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Just listened to the second Guardian WC podcast. Geoff Lemon and Russell Jackson are excellent writers but the way it is dominated by ‘The Big Three’ is getting particularly grating. It takes 45 mins before they move off Australia, England and India – despite the former not even having played since the previous podcast!
Points learnt about test-playing nations outside the Big Three:
New Zealand – their grounds are small (they seem obsessed by this – second week running they’ve banged on about it)
Sri Lanka – Perera “slogged” them to a win (look forward to hearing how Faulkner slogs Australia to a win if indeed he does)
South Africa – bottled it in front of a big Indian crowd (errr, explain SA’s excellent away record?)
Pakistan – rubbish so far but could turn it around (the mercurial cliche)
Bangladesh – who?
To be fair, WI v Z was in progress as they made the recording so avoiding them is understandable.
There is some strong support for the associates near the end at least.
Also, I see from the BBC website that Worcester have re-signed Saeed Ajmal. That’ll please Selvey……
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“There are a fair few who just want to see the likes of Paul Downton and Giles Clarke get their comeuppance for kicking Kevin Pietersen out of the team”.
Careless writing – or does Andy Bull still not get it? Well done first commenter DorothyDix for nailing what was wrong with that.
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Tim Wigmore on the shrinking cricket world:
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Why the bleep can the New York Times do, what the English press mostly refused to do for 13 months and counting? At this rate, the ICC succeeds somewhat: in 2020 the Americans may be better informed about matters of world cricket than regular people in England. Not that they’ll have a competitive team but …
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Lizzy Ammon rants about Giles Clarke and in the process justifies Kicca (almost):
http://www.kicca.com/Legsidelizzy/posts/54eccc00cc10edb7ad9f7061
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I would have added the recent trends in the allocation of Test matches. Most shamefully the SA series of 2012, the justification for that wretched ODI series against Australia, and the fact that the schedule for 2015-19 proves said justification (a one-off ‘quid pro quo’) was bollocks. Plus the collateral damage that has ensued from messing up the Ashes schedule, and the bottom line, judged against the ostensible rationale behind the whole farce: there has been no improvement whatsoever in the World Cup.
In fact, I’d have put all that before even Stanford. He and his cronies have shat all over any concept of a fair and reasonable cycle of competition and distorted the Test schedule in this country for at least a decade. The treatment of SA and NZ especially is sickening.
I agree that there hasn’t been sufficient outrage about Clarke. But the Guardian, for instance, never allows comments on important ECB stories. Living down to that again today I see.
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Not had time to read it properly yet but here’s what George Dobell was hinting at in the podcast, the plans for restructuring the English game:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/838533.html
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