< 1 minute readThis is how you write a match report: a week early. England put on a staggering/staggeringly inept performance against New Zealand yesterday, after a topsy-turvy/one-sided contest in which English cricket/New Zealand cricket/cricket/the weather was the only winner. James Anderson opened the bowling and delivered a virtuoso performance/a never-ending supply 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.
Australia’s batting stutters again
< 1 minute readIs this the same West Indies side we watched letting balls through their legs at Old Trafford last year? With the honourable exception of Sir Shiv of Guyana they were a shower and were soundly beaten in the series by a rather flattered England side. Australia seem to have had
Continue readingPaul Collingwood talks all kinds of sense
2 minute readUnlike players in some other sports, cricketers quite often talk sense. They’re even capable of being interesting. That said, there have been some pretty ordinary thoughts expressed about this whole Stanford Twenty20 thing and about the IPL as well. Monty Panesar’s a bright guy, but his comments are fairly typical:
Continue readingLancashire Lemurs
< 1 minute readWe’re going to the Twenty20 match on Friday, then we’re away for a week. As usual we’ve written stuff in advance, so you probably won’t notice or care that we’re gone. Two things: (1) When we say we’re not going to be here – we’re not going to be here.
Continue reading10 million pound winner-takes-all Twenty20 match
< 1 minute readThanks to Sir Allen Stanford, England will play a West Indies XI for a £10 million prize every year for the next five years. Each player on the winning team will get £500,000. Wish we had the job of picking the England side. “You’ll get half a million quid. You’ll
Continue readingDurham v Sussex County Championship match report
2 minute read668 Neighbour Of The Beast sent us what can only be described as a monumental match report. You people are picking on us because we admitted that we felt bad when we had to edit stuff out. Here’s the shortened version: As part of this year’s getting out and seeing
Continue readingYoung India thrash Pakistan
< 1 minute readTwo things struck us about India’s defeat of Pakistan today. Actually, no things struck us. Two things gently bobbed towards us after we’d stared at the scorecard blankly for what seemed like forever. Firstly, India fielded quite a lot of youngsters. Yusuf Pathan’s 25 and most of his team mates
Continue readingNew Zealand’s Test team
2 minute readWe’d be very irritated if we were a New Zealand cricket supporter. We’re very irritated anyway. Admittedly, we get irritated by all of humanity on an hourly basis, but this is different. This is with reason. Bowling Shane Bond would add fire to any attack and the sooner this ICL
Continue readingThe state of England’s bowling
2 minute readOn the face of it England’s bowling’s strong, but New Zealand’s batting’s been occasionally dire and the last six Test matches have been in home conditions or in New Zealand – which is hardly the land of dust bowls or steepling bounce. It’s increasingly evident that England can rely on
Continue readingThe state of England’s batting
< 1 minute readWinning a Test by an innings is not to be sniffed at. What exactly would you expect to smell? England didn’t exactly dominate the series like they dominated this last match though. Overall, the team looks okay, but there are quite a few flaws, the most glaring of which is
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