King Cricket

October 1, 2014 County cricket / New Zealand

County Championship second division in 2014 – all you need to know

< 1 minute readJesse Ryder took 44 wickets at 18.09 for Essex. To put that in context, Ryder has taken 99 first-class wickets in his entire career. This season, he took four five-fors and had one ten-wicket match. These were added to the no five-fors he’d previously taken to give him a career

September 30, 2014 West Indies

Sunil Narine taken out to the Pine Barrens

< 1 minute readDo you get the feeling that there are a number of dead men walking at the minute? It’s like one mob family has ordered a series of hits on a rival family and now capos and crew members are being picked off as they go about their daily business. Sunil

September 29, 2014 Match report

Sam’s wedding cricket match report

4 minute readSam writes: They say organising a wedding is one of the most stressful things in life. Whoever they are, they have obviously never tried to stage a cricket match the following day. Having completed the marital formalities and danced Saturday night into Sunday morning, friends and family gathered at my

September 26, 2014 County cricket

Lancashire are still not quite relegated

< 1 minute readScan the homepage of this website and you could easily reach some incorrect conclusions. The post about Alastair Cook has attracted 50-odd comments, so presumably that’s a hot topic, right? Not really. The vast majority are about Lancashire v Middlesex, a relegation dogfight (involving different breeds) which seems to be

September 24, 2014 England

Alastair Cook’s sticking around for another brandy

< 1 minute read“Oh, you’re still here. I, er, thought everyone had gone home. Are you going to, er…? No, you’re not. You’re going to stick around for a bit longer, you say. You’re going to stick around and have another brandy, even though everyone else has gone home and I was clearly

September 24, 2014 County cricket / England / Regulars

The tallest order

< 1 minute readLancashire started their must-win-by-a-mile match quite well, but James Harris and Ravi Patel secured a batting bonus point for Middlesex which means we now have a clearer idea of exactly what each team needs to do to survive. Lancashire need to either score 350, or declare with fewer than eight

September 23, 2014 County cricket

Relegation’s what you need

< 1 minute readYou know what we’re doing with that headline, right? That’s your theme for the week. Every time your mind idles, hopefully that’ll be what rises to fill the void. You’re welcome. There’s basically just one thing left to play for in the first division of the County Championship and that’s

September 21, 2014 County cricket / England

Durham do the dishes and then take out the recycling

< 1 minute readThe final of the domestic 50-over competition is an odd thing. It took place yesterday, in late September – a fortnight after the semi-finals, three weeks after the quarter finals and a month after the main bit of the tournament. You can see why it works that way, but with

September 19, 2014 Extras

The worst first-class county cricket team

< 1 minute readWe rarely feel moved by events in the second division, but it’s hard not to feel a twinge of excitement at the prospect of Northamptonshire and Leicestershire playing out a draw next season to extend their respective winless streaks. We’ve reported on both of these clubs in our latest Shire

September 18, 2014 Extras

Never call someone a Kolpak

< 1 minute readBad news for Slovakian handball goalkeeper, Maros Kolpak, whose name has apparently morphed into a racist insult. Yorkshire’s Andrew Gale has been charged with a level three offence for firing the word at Lancashire’s Ashwell Prince. A level three offence involves “using language or gestures that offends race, religion, colour,