English Test cricket in the 80s

With England’s 1000th Test being played at Edgbaston this week, it has been a joy for a cricket nerd like me to wallow in the numerous articles taking a look back at the best matches and players that have been part of 141 years of history.

Naturally, I am drawn to the decade of my childhood, and I started to recall the highs and lows of English Test cricket in the 1980s. Sadly, there were far too few of the former and rather too many of the latter.

Read more »

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1986: Hockey World Cup

Hockey was hardly a popular sport in UK during the 1980s, but for a couple of weeks in October 1986, all this changed. I have to admit that the sport of hockey had not registered much on my radar during my formative years. There were the occasional matches played at Wembley on ITV's World of Sport, but these were of little interest to me. Generally, the sport was perceived very much as a jolly pastime, a female activity lumped into the same category as netball, and certainly not part of PE at my local school. Read more »
Read more

1982-83: FA Cup First Round shocks

A look back this week on some FA Cup shocks from the first round of the competition in 1982/83, including a couple of teams in financial dire straits having angst piled upon their misery, giant-killers adding to their growing reputations, and Bede McCaffrey writing his name into the history books of North Shields. Read more »
Read more

1982/83: Graham Taylor and Watford

When the sad news of Graham Taylor passing away broke on January 12, naturally the tributes came flooding in. Whilst many noted that his time in charge of England was troubled, a lot column inches and html paragraphs were dominated with the successes Taylor enjoyed at club level, and in particular his glorious spells at Watford. When you see what Taylor had previously achieved at Lincoln City, and later at Aston Villa, it wasn't hard to see why England came calling in 1990. Inevitably this blog will focus upon his heyday at Watford in the 1980s, and in particular Taylor's remarkable first season in the top flight during the 1982/83 campaign. To achieve three promotions in five years was one thing, but to then lead an inexperienced set of players to second place in Watford's debut season with the big boys was something else. Watford may have received a lot of criticism for their approach, yet for Taylor and Chairman Elton John, this was a victory for substance over style. Re...
Read more