We now turn our attention to the County Championship Division Two. Who’s your money on?
Is it that time of year already? Lambs in the field, blossom on the trees, extra ice cubes in our G&Ts and the sound of cricketers everywhere retreiving their kitbags from the attic and smacking their foreheads in annoyance when they realise they left half a sandwich underneath their pads all winter.
In a twist on the usual mode of starting with the dregs and finishing with the best, we turn first to the County Championship Division One and give our thoughts on each team’s prospects for the season. For any pedants out there, we’re mainly talking Pro40 and the First-Class season, we’ll cover the T20s in much more detail when they come around later in the year.
The West Indies vs. Australia conjures up images of the greats battling it out. So how did Johnson Charles and Xavier Doherty get on?
The 51allout team are branching out into unknown territory. The IPL begins on April 4th and we’re not only going to keep you updated with weekly reviews, we’ve also picked a team for us all to support together.
A much more determined batting performance by England put them within sight of victory before the lower order crumbled into the Galle dust and handed Sri Lanka a famous triumph.
After England dragged themselves back into the game, Sri Lanka’s tail wagged furiously for the second time in the match to put the home side into an almost unassailable position.
In a rain-affected Test, Kane Williamson scored a brilliant, match-saving century to deny South Africa a 2-0 series win. Oh, and Graeme Smith made one of the great declarations to give him a hand.
Slow bowlers are used. England collapse. Stuart Broad looks really, really annoyed.
Mahela Jayawardene played a lone hand in scoring a high-class hundred which guided Sri Lanka towards a competitive first innings score.
With England being well and truly trounced in their Test series against Pakistan, they now face Sri Lanka in uncomfortable conditions and with a number of questions needing to be answered. Some of the 51allout contributors have thus sat down and submitted their bold (and not so bold) predictions for the series, and at the very least gives up something to come back to for amusement once the two matches have finished.