King Cricket

April 12, 2016 England

James Taylor has a literal heart problem

2 minute readIf James Taylor’s public pronouncements betray an admirable desire to retain a sense of humour about things, his retirement from cricket at the age of just 26 due to arrhythmogenic right ventricular arrhythmia is anything but funny. It’s easy to point to his having had a job as a professional

April 11, 2016 County cricket

Cricinfo still lumps first and second division matches in together in their live scores box

< 1 minute readDrives us mental. Why do people most often visit Cricinfo? To check the scores. Yet if we look at the current live matches, there is no way of telling which match is in which division, unless you happen to have memorised the teams in each league. At the time of

April 9, 2016 County cricket

Monty Panesar’s back!

< 1 minute readAs in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got anklosing spondylitis or anything. Like many people, we have a soft spot for Monty Panesar. Firstly, he lent his name to our assistant. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, he was for a time exceptionally good at bowling spin for England. Now he’s back. Back

April 6, 2016 County cricket

Most of the County Championship starts fairly soon!

< 1 minute readThe wind is tearing the blossom from the trees and depositing it on the dirty wet earth. Men and women in thick winter coats turn their pallid faces to the skies, scrutinising the clouds for tip offs of impending rain showers. Firewood is gathered. Thermostats are turned up. It is

April 5, 2016 Extras

Four things we learned from the 2016 World T20

2 minute readWe could have done more than four, but the article was starting to look a bit long so we just arbitrarily drew a line under things. It’s not even the best four. It’s just the first four that came to mind. Darren Sammy can channel energy Marlon’s upset with Shane

April 4, 2016 England / West Indies

Everyone knows that hitting four successive sixes is hard, right?

2 minute readWe’re just checking, only a great many people seem to be holding Ben Stokes entirely responsible for England’s defeat. Sometimes the player hitting the sixes has some sort of say in things too. Think of it like this: if you were a primitive human and you sent one of your

April 3, 2016 England / West Indies

West Indies’ 2016 World T20 win: Fortunately for them, they weren’t playing cyborgs

2 minute readBen Stokes’ coolly outmanoevred Carlos Brathwaite at the death. Had the West Indian launched his attack earlier in the match, he could have hit six sixes in an over. As it was, he was denied by winning the World T20 after just four balls. Stokes is doubtless delighted. The desired

April 2, 2016 England / West Indies

Eight things to bear in mind ahead of the World T20 final between England and the West Indies

2 minute readYou can call it a preview if you want, but it’s more of a disorderly fact-dump. 1. Windies’ spinners don’t go for owt Samuel Badree conceded 5.68 runs an over in this tournament. Sulieman Benn’s conceded 5.78. Hell, even Chris Gayle’s banged out three overs for 17 and we thought

March 31, 2016 India / West Indies

Virat Kohli is not a bowler, Lendl Simmons is not out, Andre Russell is not suspended

< 1 minute readIndia became so utterly convinced of Virat Kohli’s Midas touch that they gave him an over with the ball. He took a wicket with his first ball. That was the point where they should probably have drawn a line under things. Instead, Kohli came back to bowl the final over

March 30, 2016 England / New Zealand

If we start calling Jason Roy a ‘roybot’ do you think it’ll catch on?

< 1 minute readChris Jordan and Ben Stokes were the actual heroes for England, but this is Twenty20, so like everyone else, let’s instead turn our attention to Jason Roy – a batsman. Roy used both edges of his bat and quite often the middle. Crucially, he also abandoned the moronic belief that