< 1 minute readHere’s a comparison. The Rugby World Cup finished last Saturday. England played in the final. Their next international fixture will be on the second of February. England’s final match in the Cricket World Cup was on the 21st of April, against the West Indies. Their next international fixture, a Test
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.
Shaun Pollock’s arms of expression
< 1 minute readThere is literally no cricketing event that Shaun Pollock can’t portray through subtle distinctions in his ‘arms aloft’ pose. An lbw appeal. Celebrating a wicket. Celebrating a hundred. You’ll also notice that Shaun tends to appear as a mirror image when celebrating a wicket.
Continue readingStrauss being conspicuously indifferent to Strauss’s omission
< 1 minute readLemon Bella has the latest on Strauss’s omission from the England squad: “Here is a picture of StraussCat being indifferent to Strauss (again). It means you can get two posts out of the Andrew Strauss announcement, instead of just the one.” “You’d think in this time of crisis his namesake
Continue readingDerbyshire sign Mahela Jayawardene as well
< 1 minute readWhat’s going on? Derbyshire are getting serious. Their latest signing is none other than Mahela Jayawardene – only one of the finest batsmen in the world. Jayawardene will also be playing alongside four other top drawer new signings for Derbyshire: Wavell Hinds of the Windies, who doesn’t count as an
Continue readingAndrew Strauss’s omission
< 1 minute readSo Andrew Strauss has finally been dropped. It’s about time. We don’t mean that in the sense that he’s not good enough for England, just that it seems to have been certain to happen for altogether too many matches. Strauss has been going to the crease thinking it was his
Continue readingWill Indian Twenty20 wins help kill 50-over cricket?
< 1 minute readSurvival of the fittest. Cricket has mutated again. While an early mutation, 50-over cricket, lives happily side-by-side with Test cricket, there aren’t enough natural resources to support both as well as Twenty20. In a few years time, one of these forms might have gone the way of the dodo. If
Continue readingAlex Loudon retires from cricket
< 1 minute readAt the age of 27. Uninjured. This is why we shouldn’t allow Old Etonians to become professional cricketers. What kind of a person gives up professional cricket in favour of ‘a career in business’? Well congratulations, Alex. You’ll be shaking hands with people for a living before you know it.
Continue readingImpotent miserliness or profligate wicket-taking, which wins a one-day match?
< 1 minute readWell obviously wicket-taking miserliness is what you’re aiming for. But there was a fire-and-ice, chalk-and-cheese, black-guy-and-ginger-guy contrast between South Africa’s opening bowlers in the first one-day international against Pakistan. Shaun Pollock didn’t get a wicket but only went for three an over from his full allocation. Makhaya Ntini went at
Continue readingMurali Kartik has a good day
< 1 minute readIndia beat Australia in a dead match at the end of an overlong one-day series about as far away from a World Cup as it’s possible to be. Could we have some Test cricket now, please? Murali Kartik took 6-27, which are pretty astonishing one-day figures. He then hit 21
Continue readingRikki Clarke joins Derbyshire as captain
< 1 minute readIn the county cricket club fashion stakes, Derbyshire languish somewhere near the bottom. Whenever anyone needs to depict the mundane, life’s-going-on-elsewhere nature of early-season County Championship matches, they always pick on Derbyshire. That’s unfair in much the same way as ‘it rains in Manchester’ jibes are. The whole bloody island’s
Continue reading