Take that fiercely impassioned South African pride with a truckload of salt. For all of their AB de Villiers bluster (and de Villiers is a magnificent cricketer, this is no slight against him), England's Matthew Prior is the finest wicketkeeper-batsman in Test cricket today and, quite possibly, since the nonpareil...

"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." I'm reasonably sure that Joni Mitchell wasn't referring to Mahendra Singh Dhoni when she penned those lyrics for her song 'Big Yellow Taxi', but the sentiment remains.

Any individual captaining their nation is subject...

The role of the BCCI as pantomime villain of world cricket continues. Just as news of a Test series involving India neglecting the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS) had begun to induce a mere sigh of resignation in place of erstwhile outright consternation, they have upped the stakes.

Sachin Bahaj,...

Talent. It is a word that has become synonymous with - and almost a cliché of - any commentary stint during an England One Day International. The talented Ravi Bopara. The talented Jade Dernbach. Both men have been fixtures of the setup throughout the period that saw England scale the...

Monday was a bittersweet day for Ian Bell. Where the wretched Birmingham weather had contrived to dash any hopes he may have harboured of scoring the additional 24 runs required to ensure he became the first Warwickshire player to score a Test century at Edgbaston, the rather more soothing news...

I have been away for the past week sampling the delights of camping across various rain stricken sites in England and Wales, so you'll hopefully forgive me for this rather late piece on the Kevin Pietersen retirement debacle. I must also apologise for another piece on the inventor of the...

When Darren Sammy awoke from a slumber filled with English-conquering dreams earlier this month, he would have donned his maroon robe, picked up the St Lucia Express from the doormat and read that England's green and pleasant lands were officially in the midst of severe drought. The pocket hand warmers,...

Until recently the Indian Premier League had been to me what protecting Gotham City has been to Batman for the past 73 years; fun on occasion, but swiftly becoming tedious and largely irrelevant. Where the Dark Knight had to contend with new, increasingly cunning and malevolent super-villains shortly after deposing...

Sunday 15th April
Warwickshire, 243 & 262/8, beat Somerset, 147 & 354, by two wickets.

William Porterfield struck an eye pleasing 84, aided by some tail-end pyrotechnics from New Zealand's Jeetan Patel, as Warwickshire completed a two wicket victory over Somerset at Edgbaston.

Victory will be of great relief...

It's taken five Tests, a great deal of soul searching, unceasing running repairs to increasingly damaged reputations and a dose or two of severe humiliation along the way but England have succeeded in winning a Test match in Asia for the first time this winter, seizing their final opportunity to...

Well we hoped for a while, didn't we?

As Jonathan Trott and Matt Prior expertly marshalled England to a score of 233-4 chasing an improbable total of 340 in what would have been the biggest successful run chase in the annals of English cricket, even the most pessimistic of England...

As England's second three day warm-up match of this two Test 'mini-tour' of Sri Lanka culminated in an unexpectedly exciting finale, thus averting one of those all too familiarly insipid draws so often associated with this beautiful isle, a sense of foreboding ahead of the upcoming five day stuff had...

Watching the fascinating interview between former England captain Michael Atherton and disgraced former Pakistan fast bowling protégé Mohammad Amir last night stirred a number of emotions. Renewed disbelief that such events actually unfolded was just one, accompanied by anger that here sat one perpetrator of corruption within the most gentlemanly...

Browsing various cricketing websites and forums, an almost religious tendency of mine during any given day, I get the distinct impression that many Indian pundits and fans alike are a little 'doom and gloom', shall we say, concerning the future prospects of their side in Test cricket. Indeed, some maverick...

With news reaching the cricketing world that batsman Alviro Petersen will be joining Essex as their overseas player for the first half of the 2012 County Championship season, it is the second such announcement of late that I must admit to finding slightly baffling. The other announcement, of course, was...

Let me begin my first HuffPost UK blog entry by congratulating the England cricket team on their completion of a 4-0 One Day International (ODI) series trouncing of Pakistan in Dubai on Tuesday.

England and ODI cricket are rather akin to politicians and honest expense claims; they rarely go together,...