< 1 minute readWhy does no-one tell us these things? That title should perhaps read ‘there was a cricketer called Julius Caesar’ but a little ambiguity never harmed anyone. Our Julius Caesar was a Surrey short-arse who was ‘a fine steady bat’ whose fielding at point was ‘extremely beautiful’. Apparently, he could also
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.
How are South Africa faring as they begin their tour?
< 1 minute readWe’ll give them one thing: they got into the middle. That’s no mean feat this summer. Other than that, things were as rosy as wet cardboard. They conceded 312-8 against Somerset, despite dismissing Nick Compton for a duck. (His presence might have slowed the run rate a tad, actually). They
Continue readingEngland aren’t the best one-day side but neither are Australia
< 1 minute readA 5-0 win for England in this one-day series would have sent them to the top of the one-day rankings. That would have been as anomalous as “multi-coloured sweets in white sweet pack” to needlessly quote The Fall’s Mark E Smith. That line appears in a song called The Joke,
Continue readingRating Mark Ramprakash’s career
< 1 minute readWe long ago had our say about whether Mark Ramprakash could have been an England great if he’d been treated differently. Our stance is: ‘Well maybe, but that don’t change owt’. Today, for once, we’d like to focus on what he DID achieve, because that was pretty extraordinary. Scoring 2,000
Continue readingAustralian selector says the batsmen are rubbish
< 1 minute readWell, you know, reading between the lines and joining the dots and making the odd leap and adding a few extra dots – that’s basically what he’s said. John Inverarity’s comments include gems such as: “They’re the best we’ve got.” Which we like to imagine being delivered with a laissez-faire
Continue readingEngland v West Indies Twenty20 international match report
2 minute readSam writes: We were moving house. Or rather, we had already moved house, and now we were back in the old house for a day of cleaning, painting, sorting and tidying. It was not going to be fun. On arrival, we got down to business in the bedroom (wink wink,
Continue readingTwo new balls for England
2 minute readThat title refers to the fact that two balls are now used in one-day internationals – one from each end. You could read it as being a reference to the effect this rule change has had on England as well though. It’s often said that using two balls is good
Continue readingAustralia strike back but England strike back back
< 1 minute readEngland got in an early blow ahead of all those Ashes serieses the day before yesterday when Australia selected Steven Smith to bat at six. However, the Aussies have now struck back through not selecting Steven Smith at all. Undeterred, England reacted swiftly and once again hold the advantage after
Continue readingWe’ve got a new website
< 1 minute readYou may have noticed that we’re prone to cycling metaphors (see here and here for examples). This is because we like cycling. We like it for much the same reasons as we like cricket: it takes ages, it’s a team sport heavily-reliant on individuals, different people come to the fore
Continue readingEngland land early blow ahead of all those Asheses
< 1 minute readEngland today landed a massive blow ahead of all the millions of Asheses that are going to be played over the next few years. This blow will have sent shockwaves through the whole of Australia. The monumentally significant moment came when Australia named their team and revealed that Steven Smith
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