2 minute readWe missed a trick when naming our county players to watch. Instead of trying to keep things manageable by limiting ourself to five, we should have completely changed the rules and just named all the England squad contenders who we were watching anyway. What happens now is we open all
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.
King Cricket’s 2014 county players to watch
2 minute readThat’s ‘players to watch in 2014’. We don’t have 2,014 players to keep an eye on. In fact, we’ve got fewer than ever before – just five. A reminder of the qualification criteria: Qualified to play for England No established internationals Youngish Playing in the first division of the County
Continue readingEngland Squad Watch – part three
< 1 minute readThe fight for England spots continues to a soundtrack of very gentle applause from a smattering of supporters who didn’t happen to have much on that day (activity-wise). Top order Jonathan Trott made 37 against Sussex – although to be fair, that has been the second-highest score in two completed
Continue readingEngland Squad Watch – part two
< 1 minute readEveryone knows that the key to a strong international side is ‘competition for places’. It absolutely isn’t the case that ‘competition for places’ is really just a synonym for ‘the first XI’s turned crap’. Yesterday’s England Squad Watch ended rather bleakly with the specialist batsmen seemingly competing only for a
Continue readingEngland Squad Watch – part one
2 minute readWho plays for England these days? NO-ONE KNOWS. They don’t even have a coach and the uncertainty pours down from there, covering everyone in a sticky, unctuous goo that at first you think might be some sort of over-ripe berry that’s fallen from a tree, before realising that there’s no
Continue readingOf new eras and transitional periods
< 1 minute readWe wrote for someone else. Since we stopped writing for The Cricketer’s website a few years back, we haven’t really had an outlet for non-satirical longer articles, so we reckon that’s what we’ll do for Cricket365 and we’ll link to anything that goes up there. This first piece is about
Continue readingTighter than the seal provided by a nitrile O-ring
2 minute readBut yet able to withstand heat in the manner of an O-ring fashioned from a Viton fluoroelastomer. Sri Lanka’s bowling was so efficient, it deserves to be described using mechanical gasket terminology. The power of weirdness This World T20 was another lesson for those who still believe that the shortest
Continue readingSouth Africa chose to bat
< 1 minute readThat was where everything went wrong. They hauled it back a bit by batting okay, but really the match was decided when Faf du Plessis scorned the coin’s generosity. Why would you ask Virat Kohli to chase? It’s like asking Mike Gatting to guard your cupcakes from scavengers. This leaves
Continue readingWere Sri Lanka far and away the better team?
< 1 minute readGrowing up, our home town had one cinema, which had two screens. If you wanted to watch a film, you watched what was on. That’s the only possible explanation as to how we once found ourself watching Far and Away, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Towards the end of
Continue readingWhen is a lottery not a lottery?
< 1 minute readMinnows, upsets, India v Pakistan and the semi-finals already – this World T20 is getting the job done. And while some people claim that Twenty20 can be a lottery, you can make a strong case for the four remaining teams also being the four strongest. Sri Lanka v West Indies
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