6 minute readTony Greig captained England 14 times and managed three wins – all of them in India in a series victory. But we’ve already said too much, because there is only one rule when you talk about England all-rounders, and that is that you must always neglect to mention Tony Greig.
Continue readingMonth: September 2020
Was it tantamount to cheating for Essex to have Alastair Cook in the Bob Willis Trophy final?
2 minute readEssex won the Bob Willis Trophy because they scored more first innings runs than Somerset in the final. Essex made 337-8 and Somerset made 301. Alastair Cook scored 172. Only one other Essex player passed 30. There is something satisfying about this; the idea that the best players are very
Continue readingYou can watch (and rewatch) the whole of the Bob Willis Trophy final for free – including rain delays
2 minute readThe Bob Willis Trophy final between Somerset and Essex is taking place this week. There were only 44 overs yesterday, but that’s okay because it’s a five-day game. The big news is that you can watch it. Sky Sports, the England and Wales Cricket Board and the BBC are all
Continue readingWhat can other sports teach us about doping in cricket?
4 minute readWe’ll try and keep this fairly short because now that we’ve written the headline, we’ve realised we don’t actually want to write a whole big thing because it’s not really a very fun subject. Jarrod Kimber yesterday posted a sort of mea-culpa-cum-podcast-advert on his substack. It’s about drugs in sport
Continue readingLet’s use Ken Nordine’s word jazz album ‘Colors’ to work out who’s going to win the 2020 IPL
5 minute readIf there’s a simple and obvious way of predicting the 2020 IPL that for some reason hasn’t yet been done, it’s this… We’re going to look at all of the team kits; we’re going to establish the main colour of each one; and then we’re going to listen to what
Continue readingAdil Rashid and the art of lofting the ball over backward point
2 minute readWhen we wrote about how Adil Rashid is almost as good a batsman as Stuart Broad the other day, a number of people saw this as some kind of slur. Maybe they misinterpreted our words because they for some inexplicable reason do not believe that Stuart Broad is a quite
Continue readingAdil Rashid is almost as good a batsman as Stuart Broad
2 minute readStuart Broad is the greatest batsman in the history of cricket. Everybody knows that. What people don’t know is that Adil Rashid is almost as good. One of the great tragedies of England having loads of bowlers who can bat is that fans very rarely get to catch a glimpse
Continue readingA cricket pad in an unusual place/a baby in an unusual cricket place
2 minute readSend your pictures of cricket bats and other cricket stuff in unusual places to king@kingcricket.co.uk. Feel free to put the cricket thing in the unusual place yourself. Miriam writes: Here is a photo of my new baby daughter Clementine in a cricket pad. She is being conspicuously indifferent to cricket,
Continue readingThe weight of being Ian Bell finally takes its toll
3 minute readAs Ian Bell retires from first-class cricket, let’s talk about a player whose Test record was plenty good enough but whose technique honestly left us kind of cold. Ian Bell was player of the series in a 3-0 Ashes win. Can we just state that first before we get into
Continue readingIf a cricket match is played and no-one is there to boo David Warner then how can we be sure that Australia truly lost?
< 1 minute readThe First Crowd-Free T20 International between England and Australia saw the home team engineer a position where they would have to play very well and Australia very badly to secure their desired result. England did their bit and so too did Australia, in large part thanks to David Warner’s nondescript
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