Imagine a debate about batting. On one side of the argument, we have Michael Atherton, Nasser Hussain, Michael Vaughan, Rob Key, Brendon McCullum, Ben Stokes, Ricky Ponting and Ian Chappell. They bring between them 743 Test caps and just over 50,000 runs at a combined average of 40 per innings. On the other side we have me, a political writer and one-time neat wicketkeeper and stolid lower middle order batsman for Bury Grammar School. It hardly seems like a fair fight and it isn’t, because I am right, and they are all wrong. It is amazing that this should be true but, with all due modesty, it is true. And when we contemplate why, we discover a little about the nature of batting in Test cricket and quite a lot about the nature of cricket commentary.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Round The Wicket to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.