Kindle Notes & Highlights
proving that statistics, like the dresses that come out of the wardrobe on Oscar night, reveal as much as they conceal.
English football has always loved a hard man, in the same way cricket loves a fast bowler. It’s because we all enjoy an ooh and an aah while we’re watching, I guess. The thought of the pain they might inflict adds to the drama.
If I bowled in the nets there was no problem whatsoever, but take that netting away and move into a match scenario and it was a totally different proposition. It was clearly a mental frailty.
Viv had menace but Garry was charismatic. He would be unbelievably chilled out. It was just his way of getting in the mood before taking you to the cleaners.
Goodness knows what they would have done to you if you had dared a reverse or a switch hit. I can only imagine that it would have involved a summons at dawn.
As Stuart Broad quite rightly said, there was never a need to ban Kevin Pietersen from that England team.
while there is no better place to win than at Lord’s, equally there is no worse place to lose.
‘How many paces do I do, skipper?’ Thommo asked him. ‘What do you mean? I’ve no idea. Don’t you know?’ ‘Nah, I’ve always walked back to where the tree is at this end – but they’ve cut it down!’
Arguably, the most memorable was when Thomson declared: ‘Truthfully, I enjoy hitting a batsman more than getting him out. It doesn’t worry me in the least to see the batsman hurt, rolling around screaming and blood on the pitch.’
My only beef from a cricket perspective was that I couldn’t do better.
