< 1 minute readWe’re going away for a week. We’ve written stuff to appear while we’re away, like usual. You can insult us in our absence, like usual. An occasional visitor can point out some major cricket news that we haven’t covered, like usual. And one of you can leave an insulting comment
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.
Shakib al Hasan is the best all-rounder in one-day internationals
< 1 minute readShakib al Hasan is the best one-day international all-rounder in the world. It’s official. According to who, you ask? According to maths. You can’t argue with maths. Well, you can argue with maths, but it takes ages and you’ll get confused and bored, so why bother? Just take it on
Continue readingIPL window for England players
2 minute readA group of guys who aren’t you have got an opportunity to earn a lot of money. The situation is that any England players who might actually be wanted by an IPL franchise will play Twenty20 in India for three weeks and then their next match after that will be
Continue readingTests at neutral venues
< 1 minute readZapp Brannigan says: “What makes a good man go neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?” Neutrality sickens us, just as it sickens him. Picturing a neutral crowd at a neutral Test venue sends us into a blind fury at all
Continue readingShoaib Akhtar is a ‘what’
< 1 minute readPakistan captain, Shoaib Malik, is fed up with waddly, disinterested purveyor of two-over spells, Shoaib Akhtar. “Everyone can see what is out there,” he said about everyone’s favourite one-time fast bowler. Rumour has it that Malik has asked the selectors to replace Akhtar with a patch of slightly longer grass
Continue readingAndrew Strauss wants cricketers who use their brains for something other than preventing their skulls from caving in
2 minute readWe’re not in the habit of paying much heed to public pronouncements from cricketers. You can say what you like. It’s not the same as actually doing something. We could say that we beat Thor at chess yesterday, but it’s transparently a lie. We would never play chess. However, we
Continue readingButt cracks balls and more
< 1 minute readWe dread to think what search engine traffic we’re going to get from that title, but you can’t sashay through life being called ‘Butt’ without some sort of consequences. It’ll teach some visitors the importance of the humble comma at any rate. Prior to the first one-day international against Sri
Continue readingHaydos: gone but not forgotten
< 1 minute readIn many ways, Matthew ‘Haydos’ Hayden is irreplaceable. Not his batting, obviously, Aussie opening batsmen are ten-a-penny. We’re thinking more about his way with words and the way he never lets the faintest whiff of self awareness enter his consciousness. What was your career highlight, Haydos? “Singing the team song
Continue readingShaun Marsh wants to play straighter
< 1 minute readShaun Marsh said he wanted to play straighter after making 79 in Australia’s win over South Africa. How much straighter does he want to play? Now granted, we slept through a good deal of his innings, but from what we did see Marsh’s batting was straighter than Chuck Norris doing
Continue readingMurali’s batting
< 1 minute readMurali’s always had a certain approach to batting. Have a ruddy great swing at the ball Miss Have an even bigger swing at the next one Usually this method fails for reasons that are fairly clear even to Murali. Occasionally it doesn’t and he hits 33 off 16 balls to
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