King Cricket

October 27, 2014 Australia / Pakistan

The head-wobbling ghosts of Zulfiqar Babar and Yasir Shah

2 minute read It can be hard to keep up with Pakistan’s playing staff. Mitchell Marsh gets a debut and great tracts of webspace are devoted to him, explaining what this decision means and why it’s such a monumental event. In contrast, Pakistan players ghost into the side and it’s only when they’ve

October 25, 2014 Pakistan

Pakistan thrive on hardship and chaos

< 1 minute read Pakistan. Is there any sporting team in the world for which the link between sound preparation and performance is less meaningful? Having lost what was arguably the best new ball attack of its time as a result of that spot fixing thing, Pakistan rebuilt their bowling around Saeed Ajmal. Being

October 24, 2014 Match report

England v Sri Lanka at Lord’s Day three match report

3 minute read Ged writes: When Daisy and I go to a day of international cricket at Lord’s these days, I apply for seats in the Lower Compton or Lower Edrich, as Daisy likes to hide from the sun. These seats are relatively unpopular with the county members, so we tend to get

October 23, 2014 Australia / Pakistan / Regulars

Mop-up of the day – stealth, Siddle, celebrations and social media

2 minute read First up, Pakistan v Australia where the ‘home’ side appear to be doing a reasonable job of putting a score on the board. It’s always hard to tell what’s a decent first innings total, but with Pakistan’s flaky batting, you reckon they’d be pretty happy already. Stealth The major contributor

October 22, 2014 Australia

Steve O’Keefe and Imran Khan

< 1 minute read Steve O’Keefe’s finally been picked to play a Test match for Australia. We mentioned him as far back as 2010 as being a spinner who wasn’t completely rubbish, but who was somehow being overlooked in favour of any number of slow bowlers who were. O’Keefe’s the second spinner, so Australia

October 21, 2014 South Africa

South Africa’s 2015 World Cup strategy

2 minute read Is it a sign of a good side that they can get away with working to a fairly predictable strategy? Innovation is often a way of making up for shortcomings. South Africa’s approach to one-day cricket is what comes up by default in cricket strategy software. You’re meant to tweak

October 19, 2014 India / West Indies

Abandoned West Indies tour is not in the spirit of cricket

2 minute read We consider the Spirit of Cricket – the branded, upper-case initial letter creation of the MCC – to be a nebulous pile of bollocks. You can quote us on that. However, that isn’t to say that there is no such thing as the spirit of cricket. The Spirit of Cricket

October 17, 2014 Extras

Embracing the perpendicular

< 1 minute read The Shire Horse will be holed up inside the stables for the winter months and so we’re doing a series called King Cricket’s Kings of Cricket in its place. The first cricketer to be so honoured is Brian Lara. There’s also a bit of a preamble relating to the King

October 16, 2014 Extras

Graham Gooch and some terrible puns

< 1 minute read It’s our latest piece for Cricinfo. Here’s what the critics are saying about it: “Ultimate 🙂 ROFL… Next in line is Misbah?” – The Sunday Times Now, if you’ll excuse us, we appear to have one million things to write today and very few hours in which to do it.

October 15, 2014 Match report

England v Sri Lanka at Lord’s, day two match report

3 minute read Ged writes “I’ve been a complete idiot,” said Big Al DeLarge when he phoned me on the Monday before the Test match. “I wrote the date down in the diary but not on the wall chart. My assistant has booked a holiday and I simply cannot take that day off

His nickname at Northern Districts was "flatline", good to see he's living up to it: https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/ind-vs-nz-pune-test-mitchell-santner-peaks-with-virat-kohli-wicket-1457007

Kohli career was destroyed by his wife.

Santner has got to be the least expressive man I've ever seen. Is he going through a divorce? His potm…

Great test turn-around by New Zealand after their drubbing by Sri Lanka. Never have I enjoyed a test series victory…

When was the last time you saw a bus conductor? Do such jobs still exist? I thought they'd gone the…

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