Album: The Duckworth Lewis Method, Sticky Wickets, Divine Comedy Records

Never mind the googlies. Having proved on 2009’s debut that a cricket-themed album needn’t bar those non-initiated in wicket-speak, the Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon and Pugwash’s Thomas Walsh strike another fine balance between cricket’s arcane specifics and its universal metaphors in cucumber-crisp batches of catch-all pastiche-pop.

Flannel fans’ pleasures are many, but the winning hits are Hannon’s “The Umpire” and Walsh’s “Third Man”.