3 minute readMarnus Labuschagne recently described facing R Ashwin as being “like a chess game”. It was an interesting choice of words as actual chess could prove to be the off-spinner’s greatest weakness. Labuschagne was alluding to that to and fro of decision-making between himself and a thoughtful bowler like Ashwin who
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Steve Smith’s mountain-toppling attempt and Rohit Sharma’s potential landslide | an India v Australia preview
2 minute readMountains crop up a lot in metaphors. They’re forever being scaled, climbed or conquered. Steve Smith has come up with his own way to reach the summit of the mountain that is a Test tour of India though. “If we are able to topple that mountain, that’d be huge,” he
Continue readingSteve Smith’s Sussex stint and podcast proxies – mop-up of the day
2 minute readMop-up of the day is a thing we do when we can’t really be bothered writing more than a sentence or two about a bunch of different things. Sometimes we end up writing extra sentences though because it looks weird if the opening sentence, in bold, is immediately followed by
Continue readingAshwin, Warner and run-rates – a recap of the 2022 Boxing Day Tests
2 minute readWe previewed the Boxing Day Tests. We may as well take a look at what happened in them. Australia v South Africa Signs of an upturn for South Africa, who finally passed 200 for the first time in many attempts. Their second innings 204 all out was enough to secure
Continue readingAdil Rashid, India’s top three and a premature death
3 minute readThey talk a lot about ‘the death’ in T20 cricket. We’re not sure it’s an appropriate label for the latter stages of India’s T20 World Cup semi-final innings. They were already on life support after six overs and rigor mortis had pretty much set in by the end of the
Continue readingSlog of the Weekend: Aiden Markram v India
4 minute readWe’re late on this one, but please bear with us because there’s one particular element (a face, if you’re wondering) which should not be overlooked. Yesterday morning, King Cricket reader Ritesh drew attention to a wonky caption to a Getty photo he’d spotted. “Kohli celebrates after hitting the winning runs,”
Continue readingSlogs of the Day: Haris Rauf v India, Virat Kohli v Pakistan
< 1 minute readWe were already fond of Haris Rauf’s look and disrespect for physics. Now we’re a fan of his batting too after he followed up a huge six against India with three almighty air swishes, the third of which netted Pakistan another two runs. Going purely on slog aesthetics, the first
Continue readingLesson from the Commonwealth Games: the team that wins absolutely every single game is a good team
2 minute readWe’ve been here before. Australia are still the team that wins everything – this time gold at the Commonwealth Games. As far as on-the-nose victory anthems go, We Are The Champions by Queen still rules the roost. Comedy writer/actor Stephen Merchant used to talk about trying to write a rival
Continue readingWe basically hate Suryakumar Yadav although it isn’t really his fault
3 minute readWe have really taken against Suryakumar Yadav and we feel quite bad about that but we also can’t help it. Suryakumar Yadav is widely known as “Sky”. He said Gautam Gambhir gave him the nickname because they’re his initials. Only they’re not his initials, are they? Because he’s not Surya
Continue readingBen Stokes’ England are so far beating their greatest enemy – second-guessing themselves
4 minute read“It’s a game of failure, batting,” said Joe Root five minutes after this Test finished. The statement was on the one hand very sage and on the other just plain wrong. Four times in a row England have chased a lot of runs to win. This would be remarkable even
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