< 1 minute readWickets advance a Test match. Yesterday therefore had all the meaningful action of two days’ cricket – 18 wickets – constricted into one. Jerome Taylor kicked things off, but it was Jimmy Anderson who enjoyed himself to the full with six wickets for 42 runs off 12.4 overs. In the
Continue readingAuthor: King Cricket
Otherwise known as Alex Bowden, a lapsed cricket journalist who has written for ESPNCricinfo, wisden.com, Cricket 365, The Cricketer and plenty of other places.
Links to some non-cricket writing and a bit more background here.
Alastair Cook hasn’t made a hundred since yesterday
< 1 minute readRestart the clock. This may have been all of 10 runs more than he made just a handful of Tests ago, but it rewrites a tired script. Suddenly people can’t fall back on ‘hasn’t made a hundred since…’ and so they’re instead forced to look at the facts. Those facts
Continue readingJerome Taylor’s back
< 1 minute readAs in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. We’ve always liked Jerome Taylor. He tends to bowl quickly, full and straight and that tends to mean more runs and more wickets, which if you think about it is pretty much how a Test match progresses. If this were
Continue readingHow Sussex took the lead without really batting all that well
2 minute readLet’s exploit this gap in England’s Test series to get up to speed with this year’s County Championship and the very top of the table specifically. Currently, that means Sussex. In their first five innings of this year, the individual members of Sussex’s top five passed 50 just four times
Continue readingWhen is an England squad not an England squad?
2 minute readThis is probably the weirdest England squad we can remember. It’s not quite a B-team, but nor is it a real A-Team. It’s a 2010 cinematic rehash A-Team. Some of the names are about as familiar as that of Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson as well (the guy who was passed off
Continue reading
Why we pay no attention to the second division of the County Championship
2 minute readEarlier in the year, someone-or-other expressed their reservations about adding three teams to England’s four-day competition and dividing it into three divisions of seven. They said that it would be hard to maintain the quality. We can’t remember who it was, but this comment seemed to us to betray a
Continue readingJimmy Anderson makes a delicious omelette
2 minute readWe stand by everything we said yesterday. We never said England lacked eggs, only baskets. There have always been plenty of oeufs in the new ball basket and Jimmy Anderson is adept at using them. Take three wickets for one run and additional receptacles seem superfluous – particularly if you
Continue readingThe pitch may well be unacceptable…
< 1 minute readBut complaining about it is even more unacceptable. If England didn’t have quite so many eggs in the basket marked ‘steady accuracy’ things might be rather different. A truly fast bowler would be nice. A leg-spinner going for runs but making the occasional breakthrough would be handy. A bit more
Continue readingJoe Root makes a hundred on The Day of Inevitable Fifties
2 minute readFor a while it seemed as if no-one would make it all the way – even if it had felt inevitable that several of them would get halfway. Trott was out for 59, Cook for 76 and then Ballance for 77. They were creeping closer and it was Root who
Continue readingStuart Broad has left the building
2 minute readOr at least last week’s Stuart Broad has. Everyone get their stuff so we can move somewhere else lest he returns and finds us again. We did suggest in the comments to that piece that the real Slim Stuart might again stand up. He had bowled a handful of quicker
Continue reading