< 1 minute readYou need opening batsmen, you need a wicketkeeper, you need a spinner. You don’t always need a guy who looks like a cartoon baker. That’s not to say that such a person isn’t of value though. Sometimes the captain will look round the field and think to himself: ‘Oh for
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.
Zaheer Khan and James Anderson
2 minute readWe’re all pretty lucky, you know. For the next few weeks, we’re going to get Zaheer Khan one innings and then James Anderson the next. It’s like our metabolism has suddenly allowed us a curry-pizza-curry-pizza diet. No muesli. What follows isn’t really meant to be a comparison. It’s more about
Continue readingAlastair Cook still proving people wrong
< 1 minute readNo comments as yet on our latest Cricinfo article. We predict that at least one of the first ten will be about how Alastair Cook isn’t actually all that good and how Virender Sehwag’s better. The other nine will be asking whether the article is supposed to be funny or
Continue readingWhat is Sachin Tendulkar really thinking?
< 1 minute readThe Cricinfo headline reads: “Tendulkar not thinking of 100th ton”. Now we haven’t got time to actually click the link and read the article, but we have got time to sit here with a beer or two, spending hours thinking about that headline. How can Cricinfo know that Tendulkar isn’t
Continue readingUnder-nines match report
3 minute readBert writes: What an exciting start to the season it has been for the Old Filchonians Under-nines Junior Development Squad. The first match of a new season is always a fascinating one, with the crowd and coaches wondering whether any of the players remember their techniques, the rules, or which
Continue readingEngland’s one-day opening batsmen might stay the same
< 1 minute readFor us, this is the biggest positive to have come out of England’s one-day series win against Sri Lanka. In one-day cricket, your opening batsmen are pretty much your most important players and England have rarely had a decent, settled partnership. The run-up to the last World Cup was pretty
Continue readingHarbhajan Singh is part way there
2 minute readCricinfo have done a ‘how will history judge him?’ kind of article in the wake of Harbhajan Singh’s 400th Test wicket. Seems weird. He’s still playing, right? Harbhajan is now 31. He’s hardly shopping for his last pair of slippers. Graeme Swann had played about a dozen Tests by that
Continue readingAlastair Cook broadens his range
< 1 minute readMany of you will say Alastair Cook proved us wrong by hitting 95 off 75 balls against Sri Lanka. Our point was actually that you shouldn’t open with an anchor in one-day cricket. We say that your sensible batsman, your banker, should come in at three or four. Wrong pigeonhole?
Continue readingEngland v India Oval tickets – competition result
< 1 minute readWe asked which player top-scored with 110 not out in the 2007 England v India Oval Test. The answer was Anil Kumble. We didn’t do the names-in-a-carrier-bag draw in the end, because there were too many entries and we didn’t have enough ink. We instead opted for the spreadsheet and
Continue readingThe anchor role in one-day cricket
2 minute readThis isn’t repeat until funny. This is repeat because you haven’t said it in a while and people seem to be missing something pretty obvious about one-day cricket – English people mostly. It’s about anchors and openers. A batsman’s ‘range’ No batsman likes to be stereotyped, but let’s be honest,
Continue reading