< 1 minute readIf you’ve just arrived at work and you were planning on listening to the cricket, you could do a lot worse than listen to Test Match Sofa. It’s not too difficult to explain what it is. Imagine Test Match Special broadcast from someone’s house and with absolutely no pretence of
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.
South Africa’s strongest batting line-up
< 1 minute readNot so long ago, this South Africa batting line-up looked stronger than Geoff Capes crossed with a grizzly bear. Now? Not so much. Ashwell Prince isn’t an opener; Hashim Amla might as well paint a bullseye on his front leg; while if JP Duminy could ever get past his first
Continue readingMohammad Sami – good bowling speed, like usual, but wickets too
< 1 minute readNever judge a pitch until both teams have batted, but if a side’s bowled out for 127 and they’ve chosen to bat, you can take a good long look at the captain and maybe laugh at him a bit. Ricky Ponting should have been wary of Mohammad Asif, who’s probably
Continue readingAbout even for the Taylors
< 1 minute readYesterday, we were presented with the following two headlines via our RSS feeds: Taylor delighted by ‘special’ MBE and Taylor charged after bar scuffle Slightly disappointingly, Claire Taylor didn’t celebrate her MBE by going on an all-dayer that culminated in a drunken argument with bar staff because they wouldn’t give
Continue readingMS Dhoni: Lord Megachief of Gold 2009
2 minute readYou may not realise this, but the title of Lord Megachief of Gold is only granted for a one-year term. Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Lord Megachief of Gold 2007 and Grand Lord Megachief of Gold 2008, stands down. MS Dhoni steps up. Why MS Dhoni? Cricket is about winning. It’s not about
Continue reading2009: The year in cricket
2 minute readIt’s got to be done. Brace yourself for some links. Maybe bookmark the page for later but never actually read it. That’s what we’d do. January Peter Moores said Liberty X were derivative and Kevin Pietersen said that Moores was an inbred Maxonian obsessed with wheelie bin collections. England lost
Continue readingAs a spin bowler, Graeme Swann is England’s most important player
< 1 minute readHopefully no-one’s told him yet and hopefully he never realises, but England’s performance hinges on how well Graeme Swann plays. Obviously, taking nine wickets for not a lot had a huge impact on how England won this Test, but nowadays Swann HAS to perform. That’s not because England’s other bowlers
Continue readingShane Watson and Ian Bell and what they have in common
< 1 minute readWe wrote about Shane Watson and Ian Bell over at The Wisden Cricketer. We said that they weren’t hugely popular in their respective countries, perhaps because they were overly serious. We also said that Shane Watson couldn’t bowl. Shortly after the post went up, both Bell and Watson scored hundreds
Continue readingHow England win Test matches
< 1 minute readBasically, through ambush. They plod along, being solid and unspectacular and then in one innings in the field, they completely steamroller the opposition. Think of England’s wins since Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss took over. West Indies were rolled for 152 at Lord’s; the same opponents were dispatched for 176
Continue readingIan Bell is the second England batsman to score a hundred in the innings
< 1 minute readLet’s examine the Ian Bell fact. You know the one: he only scores hundreds when someone else in the England batting line-up has already made one. This has just happened against South Africa. Alastair Cook was first and then Ian Bell outstripped him with 141. Let’s just say that the
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