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After the rain got the better of them on Wednesday, washing out their BUCS fixture against Loughborough, the Oxford MCCU girls were eager to get back out onto the cricket pitch this week. On a beautiful morning at Parks, the Navy won the toss and put Oxford in to bat. The girls got off to […]
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Summer sports will soon be getting into full swing so here is a taste of what to expect! Athletics After great success in the FEAR/ Indoor Varsity, Athletics promises another exciting term. The 145th Varsity will be hosted away at Cambridge’s Wilberforce Road on 18th May. It will be a jam-packed day as Oxford looks […]
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In one word? Sweaty. Time for a swim. If there’s any place to go to brook the roast of that insidious beast popularly known as ‘ The Heatwave’, then it’s the breezy shores of Margate, Kent. Yelling at me neck-deep in water and in-between breast strokes is Alex Rice, singer of ‘up-and-coming’ indie band Sports Team. Having been […]
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OxStu studies Oxford’s ‘winning draw’ against Cambridge and a 3rd division league college clash. At around mid-day I am patrolling the boundary and studying play. It’s a chilly, overcast Wednesday in University Parks, laced with a stiff north-westerly breeze. This changeable spring-time weather is a nemesis to cricket, always threatening rain. Later in the […]
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Trinity Term is here and a new summer season of sport begins, making the next couple of months as fine a time as any to get outside in the sun for an hour or two a week and get active! With Varsity matches for Netball, Hockey, Football, Fencing, Rowing, and Real Tennis all taking place […]
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“I am very sorry.” Glum-faced Australian fast bowler Cameron Bancroft, who was last week spotted by the television cameras illegally tampering with the ball on the field of play with a yellow strip of sandpaper – an offence which has since prompted crisis in Australian cricket – gives a sombre statement to the world’s press. […]
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On the third day of the third Test yesterday between South Africa and Australia in Cape Town, a Test series already dogged by controversy became even more contentious. Australia took to the field with Steven Smith as their captain, David Warner as their vice-captain, and Cameron Bancroft as a promising but relatively untried Test match […]
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A quick question. You are planning to launch the latest edition of your premier Twenty20 tournament. Now, when would be best to host the pilot, tempo-setting fixture? How about day 5 of the scheduled Lord’s Test Match – the first in a new era of captaincy – and slap bang in the middle of a […]
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The University Match, 2nd day Oxford University 212 (Rackow 95, Crichard 5-72) trail Cambridge University 225 & 121-2 (Colverd 47*) by 134 runs A collective groan filled the Fenner’s air. Then it morphed to a silence imbued with disbelief. Then a final incarnation: lavish applause, genuine in origin and extended in length. Alex Rackow had […]
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University of Cambridge (133-7, Moses 43) beat the University of Oxford (123-7, Hughes 59) by 10 runs They turned up sporting a deep black jersey smacking more Black Caps than Cambridge University, but by the end of the Men’s Varsity Twenty20 fixture Fenners was undoubtedly painted the lighter shade of Oxbridge blue. Cambridge had never […]
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The first of the cricket Varsity triad takes place on Friday, at Fenners in Cambridge. Here, Calum Flintoff previews the fixtures. Last year, Oxford completed their first clean sweep of the Varsity cricket matches. Ruthless in the Twenty20; controlling at Lords; unrelenting throughout the 4-days at The Parks; this was a unique dominance – hallmarked […]
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Last year, Oxford completed their first clean sweep of the Varsity cricket matches. Ruthless in the Twenty20; controlling at Lords; unrelenting throughout the 4-days at The Parks; this was a unique dominance – hallmarked by adaptability. And yet, remarkably, this year feels more unpredictable than ever. It is not the first time that the feat […]
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There was an inevitability about it all. Cricket could never stand between Zafar Ansari and his ambitions further afield. Each tidy over of left-arm spin he sent down, and each resilient knock he crafted at the top of the order, acted merely to prolong the impending moment when Ansari’s knowledge, and ambition, would outstrip his […]
Continue ReadingA derisive critique of one of India’s greatest pastimes – cricket – and a powerful satire that deconstructs the deep-rooted ironies of India’s post-modern society, Selection Day is a fictional novel by Aravind Adiga, an Indo-Australian writer and journalist, appearing in paperback for the first time in September 2016. Through the story of two young […]
Continue ReadingOn November 18th 2016, Kyle Abbott posted a photo on his Instagram account: the pair of Kagiso Rabada and Vernon Philander were stationed either side of him, and the trio in unison clutched a used cricket ball. The caption read, “Known as the engine room !!! Always a partnership”. It was in reference to […]
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Anyone who has talked to me about cricket, and hasn’t drifted into an irrevocable catatonia by the end of the second sentence, will know that I am the stuffiest of stuffy, elitist and insufferable cricket supporters. For me, cricket isn’t really cricket unless interspersed with a couple of meals really not fit for a professional […]
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At the beginning of the millennium, cricket was widely perceived as a sport for the wealthy, elderly and those seeking to avoid any real excitement. However, with the growth of T20 cricket since its inception in 2003, it is now more popular than ever. Having seen the regrowth of cricket, professional baseball, facing a similar […]
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On the 24th of January, 47 000 expectant fans piled into the MCG, that mecca of cricket supporters the world over, to watch the culmination of 5 weeks of cricket’s latest global T20 phenomenon: the Big Bash. The sports-mad locals from Melbourne left disappointed as their Stars fell to the flashing blade of Sydney Thunder’s […]
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‘See ball hit ball’. Simple, but brutally effective. This was Ben Stokes’ analysis of the method that took him to a record-breaking 258 off a mere 198 balls in the 2nd test against South Africa, breaking the world record for the fastest ever 250 in Test Cricket. This record goes alongside his then record for […]
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