Regular readers of 51allout (i.e. this writer) will have noticed that things have been awfully quiet recently, with just a handful of articles in the past few months. The reasons for this are many and complicated, but can be summarised thus:
With life starting to get in the way of writing about cricket (i.e. it’s difficult to come up with another thousand words about how bad Australia’s ODI side is without compromising one’s progress through an almost neverending series of classic SNES RPGs from the 1990’s), the time has come to do the humane thing and put 51allout out of its misery. Like Jake Ball’s Test career. Or a deer in Alastair Cook’s back garden.
When we started this website, way back in 2011, England were actually really good at Test cricket – they’d just thrashed Australia Down Under to retain the Ashes, the batting was as solid as a rock and the bowling attack was a) good and b) exceedingly handsome. Basically, all was well in the cricketing world. As we finish the site, all is far from well: Devereux is skulking around in a Canadian T20 competition in front of one man and his (recently chainsawed) dog; England are truly dismal at five-day cricket, with no solutions to the problems of three years ago while the county game rots away in front of our eyes, caught beneath the landslide of T20 competition after T20 competition.
And that’s before we even mention The Hundred or, as we like to think of it, the ECB’s very own Brexit: a truly terrible idea, in which history and laws are ripped up to give the people something that they don’t actually want. Ten ball overs? The worst idea since someone proposed giving Jimmy Savile keys to Stoke Mandeville Hospital. Although this website will be long gone by the time The Hundred starts (and it will happen, no matter how many people point out what a stupid idea it is), you can rest assured that somewhere out there will be a few angry men throwing empty gin bottles in the direction of the television and muttering something about the work experience boy.
So, with the requisite anger now ticked off, there’s just the small matter of a few thankyous to round things off. So, in no particular order, thank you to:
Of course, it’s how you finish that counts. Hence we thought long and hard about how to best sum up seven years and countless thousands of words in one all-encompassing sentence. And this is what we came up with – we hope you enjoy it!
7 Comments
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1
Asanka G
25 Aug 2018 04:07
Thanks. I hope this is a Jay Z retirement.
2
Asanka G
25 Aug 2018 04:06
You guys would be killing it after Trent Bridge.
3
Alex G
18 Jul 2018 22:25
Also, you didn’t follow through on my idea of reviewing pubs that had tenuously cricket related names. It could have been a winner.
4
Alex G
18 Jul 2018 16:48
Thanks for everything over the years, especially the Graeme Hick article I made someone write.
There’s a cricket article with occasional reference to former Neighbours actresses/Manic Street Preachers song lyrics sized hole in my heart that I suspect will never be filled again.
5
Oliver
12 Jul 2018 06:22
🙁
6
Brian Wilkinson
11 Jul 2018 08:36
You will be missed. Not by many, sadly, but sorely by those that do.
7
John
06 Jul 2018 18:43
This is a pity, you’ll be missed.