Rob's Lobs

Taking The Lord’s name in vain

As things stand, the best, purest, most destructive striker of a cricket ball this country has produced since Ian Botham will never be permitted a proper run on a stage worthy of his talents.

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

The new Murali?

To steal shamelessly from Jon Landau, the man entrusted with selling a scraggy wannabe Bob Dylan by the name of Bruce Springsteen to the planet in 1975, I have just seen the future of spin bowling – and his name is Ajantha Mendis.

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

The greatest insignificant innings

Sehwag’s own improbable accomplishment richly deserves to be remembered for years, even decades, to come, as one of the most memorable and invigorating individual efforts in the annals of any team sport

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

The best pound-for-pound captain

It is one of professional boxing’s few saving graces that commentators still attempt to identify the world’s best “pound-for-pound” pugilist, for all that proving as much is impossible

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

Of sacred cows

Bar Bradman, Allen and Warner, Gubby and Plum, have long been the most sacred of cricket’s ancient cows

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

Trading places

Innumerable words, dispassionate and rabid alike, have been, and will continue to be, expended trying to get to the root of the collective hard-drive failure currently afflicting England’s premier national sporting teams (and yes, I am wilfully

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

Test of will

With baseball belatedly joining in last year, cricket and American football remain the only major team sports without a world crown worthy of the name

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

Big wedge, thin end

“There can be no normal sport in an abnormal society.” Thus was the stance of the South African Cricket Board during Apartheid

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

Revolution blues

If Packer can be regarded as a Marconi, Preity Zinta, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Bollywooders fronting those eight IPL consortia are equivalent to the backers of pirate radio

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

Cool Ed Smith

Ed Smith’s newie, What Sport Tells Us About Life , is not just the best book by a Middlesex captain since Mike Brearley’s The Art of Captaincy a couple of decades ago

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

When substitution adds up

Had RP been fit to bowl the 23 overs sent down by Tendulkar, Sehwag and Ganguly, in addition to the four to which he was confined, his strike-rate suggests he might have taken three wickets

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

Ricky's dream

I was off my game, mate

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

Monkeyline revisited

At the height of it all, some Pommie journo living here wrote a column calling for Ponting’s resignation, for the way his team’s behaviour had shamed the country and undermined the spirit of the game, which in turn led to a two-year investigation of

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

Symonds and the Samson Factor

It cannot be said that Symonds is widely characterised by his pigmentation

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

A tale of two flatmates

"It's difficult to compare them," Peter Moores admitted four years ago, then did just that with consummate ease

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

Vaughan reborn

Not only is Michael Vaughan showing signs of re-scaling the heights of 2002; he is also beginning to come to terms with what so many assume to be the toughest job in sport: captaining a cricket team

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

Fielders of dreams

There is, however, one department of expertise for which claiming that we’ve never had it so good is entirely justifiable, incontrovertibly so

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

Rauf justice

Surely the third umpire, the grandly-monikered Tyron Hirantha Wijewardene, should have been in a position to pick up his walkie-talkie and gently alert Asad Rauf to the bat’s involvement before he made a fool of himself

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

An undiluted champion

We Hebrews have a word for such occasions: mazeltov

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

Dear David Morgan

David/Dai, it will be on your watch, in 2009, that the ICC celebrates its centenary

25-Feb-2013•Rob Steen

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Showing 21 - 40 of 72

Rob's Lobs

Vithushan Ehantharajah

Alagappan Muthu

Osman Samiuddin

S Rajesh

Mohammad Isam