King Cricket

June 14, 2017 England / Pakistan

If Jason Roy is “due” what will happen to all those runs he saved up?

< 1 minute readJust because someone’s due, it doesn’t mean anything’s actually going to happen any time soon. Trust us on this. Referring to Jason Roy, Pakistan coach Mickey Arthur alluded to the concept of dueness, saying: “We had a discussion in the bus this morning. I was particularly worried that Roy hadn’t

June 12, 2017 Pakistan / Sri Lanka

Pakistan don’t care what year it is

< 1 minute read“300-plus scores? No, thank you. We’ll just persist with our old approach of bowling the opposition out for slightly less than our own low score, if that’s all right with you.” Pakistan held South Africa to 219-8 off 50 overs. Sri Lanka managed a whopping 236 all out against them.

June 10, 2017 England

Australia suffer forestation

< 1 minute readThat’s our way of saying they were Wooded. We wrote about the benefits of having Adil Rashid in your side a couple of days ago. Mark Wood offers something similar. Remember how the middle over used to be? It was like the batsmen saw everything in high-definition and everything moved

June 10, 2017 Uncategorized

Why Shakib-al-Hasan is just about the finest shoe we’ve ever owned

< 1 minute readSometimes you buy a pair of shoes and it’s only after the first prolonged wear that they reveal their true feelings towards you. The sides rub, the soles feel like they’re made out of wood and the uppers are so rigid that they actually gouge into your ankle. ‘Accursed footwear!’

June 8, 2017 India / Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka force Virat Kohli to use the other knife

2 minute readImagine you have a good knife and a really shitty knife. You regularly use both, but the shitty one’s kind of shitty. It can cope with cheese and maybe a courgette, but you’d never risk it on an onion or something like that. One day you want to slice a

June 7, 2017 England / New Zealand

England are taking swigs of Adil Rashid again and it’s made them a better team

2 minute readEngland are also through to the semi-finals. A handful of percussive mid-sized innings and some hearty bowling were enough to dispatch New Zealand. Jason Roy was still there, continuing his ill-advised experiments with flips and flicks, and Adil Rashid was back. England’s template was therefore pretty much back in place

June 6, 2017 Australia / Bangladesh

British Weather through to semi-finals of Champions Trophy

< 1 minute readAfter a dominant performance against Australia/New Zealand and a narrow victory over Australia/Bangladesh, the British Weather has booked itself a place in the semi-finals of the Champions Trophy. After displaying dreadful, relentlessly sunny form throughout May, UK meteorologists were left fearing that their side would be knocked out during the

June 5, 2017 India / Pakistan

Video: Yuvraj Singh goes nuts against Pakistan

< 1 minute readSuperb power hitting in the final overs of the innings from Yuvraj Singh ???? #INDvPAK #CT17 pic.twitter.com/qtk6tW23Am — ICC (@ICC) June 4, 2017 It’s nice to see that Yuvraj Singh’s nuts-at-the-end-going capabilities are largely undiminished because going nuts at the end has always been very much his thing. For their

June 3, 2017 India / Pakistan

India and Pakistan resolve to fulfil fixture obligation despite Abdul Razzaq’s retirement

< 1 minute readThe cliché is that cricket is a religion in India, which has always seemed to us to greatly overstate the importance of religion in a country where such things are basically ten a paise. Pakistan’s pretty keen on the sport too. It’s good to find things you have in common.

June 1, 2017 Bangladesh / England

England go with a bit of right-arm fast-medium

2 minute read‘Will four right-arm fast-medium bowlers be sufficient?’ England apparently asked themselves before the opening match of the ICC Champions Trophy. ‘No, better make it five,” they concluded, for reasons that were clear to no-one. It was very odd. One of the few things we said about England’s likely strategy for