King Cricket

July 10, 2017 England

How long until someone suggests Moeen Ali is battling to keep his Test spot?

2 minute read It feels like one of those rare moments when very few people are talking about whether or not Moeen Ali will be able to keep his place in the England side. While many all-rounders benefit from being able to contribute in two separate disciplines, the beardster always seems to be

July 7, 2017 England / South Africa

Moeen Ali and Stuart Broad follow by example

< 1 minute read With their feisty batting in the morning and a pair of wickets each, Moeen Ali and Stuart Broad truly delivered non-captains’ performances. This is what good team members do. They set an example for the captain to follow. It’s like they always say: he who leads the leader slightly reduces

July 6, 2017 England / South Africa

Joe Root sinks a few and then wanders off on his own

< 1 minute read If Joe Root’s going to try and lead by example, he might want to check whether anyone’s actually following him. If no-one does, then we’re afraid it’s just plain old ‘batting well’ – which is what he always used to do anyway. What kind of captaincy is that? If you’re

July 4, 2017 Uncategorized

Dog’s eye view of baseball-bat-wielding thug David Gower

2 minute read Okay, not strictly speaking a dog’s eye view unless (a) the dog has its eyes behind its ears or (b) there’s a tiny dog piloting the larger dog. However, that genuinely is a blurry David Gower up ahead and he really is wielding a baseball bat, the thug. Like almost

July 4, 2017 India / West Indies

Jason Holder starts to play how you always imagined he would

< 1 minute read India failed to chase down 190 against the West Indies and there were a couple of prominent reasons for this. Firstly, MS Dhoni hit India’s slowest half-century in 16 years – although ‘hit’ seems an entirely inappropriate word to use for an innings of 54 off 114 balls. MS Dhoni

July 2, 2017 County cricket

It rains more at night

< 1 minute read This is the conclusion we drew from last week’s round of pink ball County Championship fixtures. Only one of four matches in the first division ended in a result – and even that one saw only 23 wickets fall. Despite the experiment only resulting in the confounding situation where Essex

June 30, 2017 County cricket / England

BBC to show “some” live cricket from 2020 as highlights move from Channel 5

2 minute read The England and Wales Cricket Board has recently accepted that it needs to get some live cricket onto free-to-air TV. The question most of us have been asking is what constitutes “some”. From 2020 (appropriately enough) the BBC will be showing two men’s and one women’s T20 internationals each summer.

June 29, 2017 Sri Lanka

Chamari Atapattu can hit a cricket ball

< 1 minute read Chamari Atapattu – full name, somewhat confusingly, Atapattumudiyanselage Chamari Jayangani, so that she appears on scorecards with the one name she doesn’t appear to use – has played an innings. If anyone else had bothered to help her, Sri Lanka would have won. At the same time, if anyone else

June 28, 2017 Extras

Sky Sports Cricket is going to be cheaper and you won’t have to subscribe

2 minute read We were bemoaning the out-of-date way in which broadcasters sell sport to consumers a month or so ago. We said it was too expensive and you had to sign up to too much that you didn’t want. Maybe they listened. Sky Sports has announced a series of changes which will

June 26, 2017 England / South Africa

Liam Livingstone’s golden duck was one of the finest

2 minute read Liam Livingstone’s England debut was pretty spectacular. He didn’t just fail to display his talent to a wider audience, he actively concealed it. He dropped a catch; mishit everything, including the one boundary that he hit; bust his bat; and then got run out. He also found time to enrage

He certainly has land.

Slight bus conductor vibe c/w an absence of said vibe? I think not. I think of those two spinners in…

Only one phrase can describe this day's cricket: it's astounding.

Time will tell. Indeed, I am shivering with antici…pation.

Three spinners currently feels a lot, in that three bowlers might actually leave a team overstocked.

Hats off to Harry Brook’s very particular ‘steamrollered pancake pitch’ set of skills

Let’s pick the All-Time Greatest Middle-Aged XI

Less than the sum of their parts: Six Test batting partnerships that invariably disappointed

Five Graham Thorpe innings that were equal parts silly, brilliant and vital

Show me the money. Inattention and monetisation in Major League Cricket, The Hundred and Test cricket