King Cricket

April 17, 2014 Match report

India v Australia, 2004 Mumbai Test – match report

2 minute readRaaj writes: I didn’t even want a mobile phone but, after conceding that my post-Uni employability depended upon being contactable, I caved in and took on my schoolboy cousin’s chunky, silver Ericsson when he upgraded. It worked; I got a job and earned enough money to fly to Bombay to

April 16, 2014 County cricket

The numerous tabs of county cricket

2 minute readWe missed a trick when naming our county players to watch. Instead of trying to keep things manageable by limiting ourself to five, we should have completely changed the rules and just named all the England squad contenders who we were watching anyway. What happens now is we open all

April 15, 2014 County cricket

King Cricket’s 2014 county players to watch

2 minute readThat’s ‘players to watch in 2014’. We don’t have 2,014 players to keep an eye on. In fact, we’ve got fewer than ever before – just five. A reminder of the qualification criteria: Qualified to play for England No established internationals Youngish Playing in the first division of the County

April 14, 2014 County cricket

England Squad Watch – part three

< 1 minute readThe fight for England spots continues to a soundtrack of very gentle applause from a smattering of supporters who didn’t happen to have much on that day (activity-wise). Top order Jonathan Trott made 37 against Sussex – although to be fair, that has been the second-highest score in two completed

April 10, 2014 County cricket

England Squad Watch – part two

< 1 minute readEveryone knows that the key to a strong international side is ‘competition for places’. It absolutely isn’t the case that ‘competition for places’ is really just a synonym for ‘the first XI’s turned crap’. Yesterday’s England Squad Watch ended rather bleakly with the specialist batsmen seemingly competing only for a

April 9, 2014 County cricket / England

England Squad Watch – part one

2 minute readWho plays for England these days? NO-ONE KNOWS. They don’t even have a coach and the uncertainty pours down from there, covering everyone in a sticky, unctuous goo that at first you think might be some sort of over-ripe berry that’s fallen from a tree, before realising that there’s no

April 8, 2014 England / Extras

Of new eras and transitional periods

< 1 minute readWe wrote for someone else. Since we stopped writing for The Cricketer’s website a few years back, we haven’t really had an outlet for non-satirical longer articles, so we reckon that’s what we’ll do for Cricket365 and we’ll link to anything that goes up there. This first piece is about

April 7, 2014 India / Sri Lanka

Tighter than the seal provided by a nitrile O-ring

2 minute readBut yet able to withstand heat in the manner of an O-ring fashioned from a Viton fluoroelastomer. Sri Lanka’s bowling was so efficient, it deserves to be described using mechanical gasket terminology. The power of weirdness This World T20 was another lesson for those who still believe that the shortest

April 5, 2014 India / South Africa

South Africa chose to bat

< 1 minute readThat was where everything went wrong. They hauled it back a bit by batting okay, but really the match was decided when Faf du Plessis scorned the coin’s generosity. Why would you ask Virat Kohli to chase? It’s like asking Mike Gatting to guard your cupcakes from scavengers. This leaves

April 3, 2014 Sri Lanka / West Indies

Were Sri Lanka far and away the better team?

< 1 minute readGrowing up, our home town had one cinema, which had two screens. If you wanted to watch a film, you watched what was on. That’s the only possible explanation as to how we once found ourself watching Far and Away, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Towards the end of