King Cricket

May 26, 2016 England / Sri Lanka

Yet another reason why Test matches should always start on a Thursday

< 1 minute read We write Cricket Badger and Cricinfo’s Twitter round-up on a Thursday so we sometimes don’t find time to do a proper match preview if a Test starts on a Friday. Granted, this is perhaps not one of the greater considerations when the powers that be are scheduling cricket matches, but

May 25, 2016 County cricket

Brummie Kryptonite and unbeaten failures – this week’s County Championship round-up

2 minute read Let’s write a pointless opening sentence so that the formatting doesn’t look quite so weird when we give the Warwickshire v Durham game its own subheading. Warwickshire v Durham Warwickshire were very much on top after two days, but somehow, after making 313 and bowling Durham out for 190, they

May 24, 2016 England

James Vince: first look in Test cricket

< 1 minute read We have a general belief that a player’s first Test appearance is near-worthless in terms of evaluating his quality. It therefore seemed to make perfect sense for us to start documenting players’ debuts. This is the first of those pieces. We said we had faint misgivings about James Vince ahead

May 23, 2016 England

Why play Test cricket in the North of England in spring? Why play there at all?

3 minute read Some have questioned why Tests are scheduled for the North of England in May. The weather has been used as one argument against doing so, but attendances have earned a few mentions too. Let’s take a look at where Test cricket is played in England and when, and examine the

May 21, 2016 England / Sri Lanka

James Anderson fully capable of spending nine years at the wrong end

< 1 minute read If ever you want to form a pantomime horse with James Anderson, don’t expect him to dress appropriately the first time. Don’t expect him to get it right the second time, third time, or fourth time either. But give him a while. After nine years of equine double-arsedness, he might

May 20, 2016 England / Sri Lanka

The impossible James Anderson

< 1 minute read People often say of a spell that a bowler ‘looked like taking a wicket every ball’. It’s rhetoric. What they mean is that the player in question looked far more likely to take a wicket than you would normally expect. So let’s word it differently. In his second spell against

May 20, 2016 England / Sri Lanka

Jonny Bairstow has a fridge door full of hundreds

2 minute read About a year ago, we started getting milk delivered – you know, like how people used to back in the Eighties. No longer do we have to carry weighty flagons of milk in amongst the rest of the big shop; now it just materialises on our doorstep, as if by

May 19, 2016 England / Sri Lanka

England’s dodgy drivers dobbled by deadly Dasun

< 1 minute read The received wisdom is that you don’t get wickets in Test cricket with dibbly-dobbly medium-pace. This is actually entirely accurate – but only because nobody picks dibbly-dobbly medium-pacers for Tests. The truth is that dibbly-dobbly is tough for Test batsmen. Their net bowlers are 85mph, their bowling machines are 85mph.

May 18, 2016 County cricket

Samit Patel is a big fat loser – a majestic, admirable, envied, big fat loser (plus a round-up of this week’s other first division matches)

2 minute read If respect were something tangible and delicious rather than an abstract concept, Samit Patel earned more of it than even he could eat this week. He also won the battle of the Patels. What he did not win was ‘the match for Nottinghamshire against Warwickshire’. The man Kevin Pietersen calls

May 18, 2016 England

Some sort of James Vince type substance

< 1 minute read James Vince is stylish. We don’t generally trust that in a batsman and the feeling has been compounded by a nameless county bowler who recently told the Guardian’s Mike Selvey: “He likes to look good.” Despite this, it is technically possible that we could warm to a player likely to

Vertical clapping - schoolboy error - trying to play such a technically difficult game without the extra protection that the…

Huh! Interesting cricket in Western Australia... https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/one-day-cup-aus-2024-25-1444469/western-australia-vs-tasmania-10th-match-1444479/match-report Meanwhile, in India...

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.

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