chris warman

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@GOLDBABYO Yes, these days anything involving cash and having to calculate something completely throws most people at checkouts.

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@bushontheradio Campbell's soup. Usually OXTAIL or Chicken.

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@WG_RumblePants Nervous as hell.

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@benjonescricket 💯 spot on. Not test class by a long way.

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@ChrisDonson1 @andyburnham 😀

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@D00k3n @andyburnham 😀

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@Rising_america2 Rupert Lowe

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@AskBritain_ Restore

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@Rising_america2 Call an election.

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@Rising_america2 K9

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

If it is just about looking after the county players. Why not play it is May or September? Why kill test and county cricket during peak summer? You can't tell me more people want to watch the 100 than test or county cricket? That is the real issue with the 100. Everything is stacked in its favor over all other types of cricket.

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@Rising_america2 I think we all knew he was a B before he even took office. Now even just classing him as an idiot is over rating him.

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@Rising_america2 Restore

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@Neccccy Traitor

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@andyburnham Please stop gas lighting the British Public. You know full dam well the number one concern is illegal immagration and the impact it is having on our way of life

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@LeeHurstComic And his eye brows

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@JamesMelville Why is it everyone except the politicians and msm rage against this invasion? Is it really they don't see this is going to destroy the UK or is it that's what they actually want?

[chris warman @chriswarman1966]

@daveatherton Seriously. What the hells is wrong with her?

[Caught At Silly Point @atsillypoint]

Michael Atherton faced more than 20,000 balls in Test cricket, most of them from the deadliest generation of fast bowlers the game has produced. His average tells you what he scored. It doesn't tell you what he survived.

On this day in 1989, a 21-year-old Atherton made his Test debut against Australia at Trent Bridge, called up after the rebel tour to South Africa gutted the England side, and he was out for a duck two balls into his first innings before making 47 in the second. From that unpromising start grew one of the most misjudged careers in the sport, and three facts make the case.

First, the average that gets thrown at him needs its context restored. Atherton finished with 7,728 runs at 37.69, and in any casual conversation that number ends the argument. But run the 1990s through a filter and something remarkable appears: across the whole decade, the true golden age of fast bowling, when Ambrose, Walsh, Donald, Wasim, Waqar and McGrath were all operating at once, only two opening batsmen in the world passed 6,000 Test runs. One was Mark Taylor. The other was Atherton, opening for a side whose batting collapsed so routinely that his wicket was usually the only wall standing.

Second, runs were never really his currency. Atherton absorbed over 20,600 deliveries in Test cricket, which puts him in the top tier of ball-facers the format has known, and it works out to roughly 100 balls soaked up every single time bowlers wanted him gone. His defining innings says everything about the trade he worked in. Johannesburg, December 1995, England sliding towards defeat, and Atherton batted 643 minutes for 185 not out to steal a draw from a match South Africa had already won everywhere except the scorebook.

Third, the nickname. The Australians called him The Cockroach, and Steve Waugh's men did not mean it fondly, because it described the one quality they could never bowl their way around, the maddening refusal to be stamped out. Most batters of that era were measured in hundreds. Atherton was measured in hours, and against that generation of bowling, hours were the harder thing to score.