You win a Test by bowling sides out. So I plotted wickets taken by teams over last 20 years. Inspired by this post from Asad Salm, sharing Atif Mian’s charts of long-run Test performance. The idea, the trailing-average framing and the visual style are theirs. The change below is mine. Mian’s charts score every Test…

A guide to line and length, by country and by phase The one idea Line and length is the compass. The way a wicket falls tells you the length that took it: bowled or lbw means a fuller ball at the stumps, caught means a shorter ball that found the edge. The all-conditions bowler carries…

England’s 2005 tour of South Africa was almost over. Kevin Pietersen did something that still makes him wince. He went to a parlour and had the Three Lions tattooed onto his arm. His cap number was inked just beneath it. He had spent the series being treated like an intruder. He grew up in Natal.…

Something has gone out of Test cricket and nobody has mourned it. It is because what replaced it looks like progress. The draw is dying and none is mourning it. The five-day stalemate that ended with two captains shaking hands and nothing settled was once a norm. A hard fought draw is now a rarity.…

Test cricket is a war of attrition played out in shifts. While the modern game is obsessed with strike rates and power-hitting, we have lost sight of the unsung architect of the five-day format: the attritional cricketer.

The IPL has always been the laboratory of world cricket, but lately, the experiment has skewed. When legends like Sachin Tendulkar and Greg Chappell raise their voices in unison, it’s not just a debate but a call for intervention.