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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 »

This piece is a shortened version of my previous blogs on England's tour to India in 1984/85, which can be found here and here . Read more »

Mike Gatting was in a confident frame of mind at the start of England's tour to the Caribbean in 1986, but one ball from Malcolm Marshall changed everything. Mike Gatting faced his fair share of famous deliveries during his career. Many will remember that reverse sweep he attempted off Allan Border's bowling in the 1987 World Cup final , a shot that was accompanied with derision and disappointment in England. And naturally the role played by Gatting in the Ball of the Century is still discussed , his confused expression after Shane Warne had fizzed a leg break past his outside edge all part of the theatre that surrounds that moment in cricketing history. Read more »

If the 1981 Ashes series was seriously good, and the 1989 version distinctly bad from an English perspective, then I would argue that the 1985 series was far from the ugly relative in comparison. Above all it was the series that made me fall in love with the game, during a summer when I didn't have a care in the world, and I found new heroes in Botham, Ellison and Robinson. So I hope you enjoy some of my favourite memories of the 1985 Ashes, starting with the day cricket found me.   Read more »