< 1 minute readIt’s a scary thought, but England have only got one more chance to resume normal service. They’re in the final of the World Twenty20, so it’s all-or-nothing. Seasoned England watchers know their side has the ability to take this opportunity to get back to normal underperformance, but set against that
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.
RCBs v DCs match report
< 1 minute readKP goes out to hit catches to children for the Karbonn Kamal Catch between innings. “Have fun,” says Cameron White. “Whatever,” says KP and they fight for exactly two minutes. Then they stop. KP hits the catches, including an easy one for a girl. He looks at Cameron White and
Continue readingSurrey v Lancashire 40-over match report
2 minute readSam writes: Grey skies greeted us on Sunday morning as we prepared to head to Croydon for the first 40 over match of the English domestic season. The day almost got off to a disastrous start. My girlfriend put some potatoes on to boil and told me that in ten
Continue readingTim Bresnan could be the yeoman
< 1 minute readEngland haven’t had a bowler who commentators can patronisingly refer to as a ‘yeoman’ since Matthew Hoggard got the boot. Tim Bresnan’s from Yorkshire and bowls a bit of swing. Maybe he can step in and be a doughty northern caricature so that the English cricket establishment can reinforce their
Continue readingIndia don’t have good bowlers
< 1 minute readNot enough of them anyway. You have to use at least five bowlers in Twenty20. India have been using Harbhajan Singh (great); Zaheer Khan (really good, but occasionally vulnerable in Twenty20); and Ashish Nehra (solid but unspectacular). To make up their remaining overs, they use Yusuf Pathan, who is clearly
Continue readingEnglish cricket momentum – no-one knows where they’re heading
< 1 minute readEngland’s win over South Africa is proof of the EXTRAORDINARY MOMENTUM that they have gained by losing a game, having one rained off and then winning two. England are pretty much unstoppable now. That’s not to say that they’ll be tearing along down the right path, necessarily. Momentum’s great, but
Continue readingEngland’s Twenty20 batting line-up
< 1 minute readAn Englishman, an Irishman and a South African walk into a pub. “Aren’t you an England Twenty20 middle-order that inspires a surprising amount of confidence in supporters?” asks the barman. “No,” says the Englishman. “We’re three entirely different people who just happen to be of the same nationalities as the
Continue readingA fox being conspicuously partial to cricket
< 1 minute readD Charlton writes: This fox cub was not indifferent to cricket. In fact, he was the opposite: he was different to cricket. So different, in fact, that he wandered into these nets, got tangled up and trapped. Luckily, the cricket club were able to dig out Sussex CCC’s number, who
Continue readingDuckworth-Lewis Method minimum over requirement
< 1 minute readFrank Duckworth says that if there is a problem with his and Detective Sergeant Lewis’s method of deciding rain-affected games, it is in the fact that the ICC deem five overs to be sufficient to constitute a match. We agree. If we could characterise a five-over minimum requirement as Naomi
Continue readingEngland v maths
< 1 minute readMaths wins. You should never try and compete against maths. It’s unconquerable. Despite putting in one of their finest batting performances in either of the short formats, England were comprehensively beaten by maths. Maths unleashed its biggest and most destructive weaponry, the Duckworth-Lewis calculations, which cruelly shuffled figures about until
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