For the second time in three Tests, England came close to winning in Trinidad yesterday but were kept out by the stubborn defence of the West Indies tail-end batsmen. As in Antigua, last night's conclusion was fascinating, the tension felt by those following it on the other side of the Atlantic as k...

If England manage to win the final Test in Trinidad and square their series with West Indies they will have Frank to thank. Their bowlers might have something to do with it, too, but Frank is the real reason. Frank is a colleague of mine on Times Online and a couple of weeks ago he made a guest post...

Neil Gardner "If Thomson doesn't get you, then Lillee must." So went the refrain during the fateful Ashes tour when the Australian quicks Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee destroyed English batting line-ups in 1974-75. However, the pair did most of the damage with the ball, so Javed Miandad m...

…from terrorists.” Imran Khan said he knew this for a fact because… Terrorists rely on support from the masses because that’s where they get their recruits, and cricket is a game which is so loved and there’s such passion in Pakistan, that the terrorists know that if a ...

I think I will always associate Dubai with cricket and terrorism. Last November, I was in the emirate to cover the Dubai Rugby Sevens when the Mumbai attacks happened and remember watching the rolling news coverage in my hotel, shocked and yet gripped by the atrocity. A week later, and three days af...

How dispiriting it is to be a Test bowler at the moment. Unlike the lilies of the field, they toil and they spin and still they get no reward. In the past fortnight, there have been five team scores of more than 600, two of them above 700. Over the past two years there have been 12 totals of such ma...

Personally, I quite like the idea of these TV referrals. How else can England expect to take 20 wickets in a Test without the outside aid of a TV umpire who has half an eye on Murder She Wrote on the other channel and only pressed the "dismiss" button because he was bored with watching Shi...

The beer-drinkers in the (just one?) pub in Macksville, New South Wales, were severely disappointed on Thursday, says the Sydney Morning Herald. The owner had offered free beer to the locals for the duration of the debut Test innings of Phillip Hughes, their local hero, but the offer, like Hughes, l...

I'm editing a rugby sevens World Cup supplement this week (off to print today, appearing on Times Online next week) so I've not had time to do much blogging, which is a pain given that there are two fascinating Tests on at the moment. Guess I picked a bad week to give up solvent abuse too. Anyway, u...

Younus Khan has waited for more than a year to play Test cricket again and now that Pakistan are back in action he is determined to enjoy his return to the crease. Younus took guard nine balls before the close of the second day in Karachi and is still there two days and 545 balls later. With the mat...