King Cricket

November 17, 2009 Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka replace Chaminda Vaas

< 1 minute readSri Lanka have searched long and hard and now they’ve finally found a replacement for Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas. Step forward Uda Walawwe Mahim Bandaralage Chanaka Asanga Welegedara, who opened the bowling against India yesterday. If only his mother were still alive to see him make his debut.

November 16, 2009 India

Rahul Dravid still has some runs to score

< 1 minute readDid anyone outside India really think that Rahul Dravid should have been dropped at any point during his relatively prolonged spell of poor form? We certainly didn’t. It’s Rahul Dravid. Looking back now, it seems that run of poor form ended about this time last year in Mohali when he

November 16, 2009 England / South Africa

Cow corner cricket – Twenty20 matches that push the boundaries

< 1 minute readEngland just couldn’t quite get the 85 runs they needed off the final ball. However, while we give Loots Bosman and Graeme Smith enormous credit for the faultlessness of their hitting, South Africa’s monumental Twenty20 total of 241 was perhaps one step too close to slogging. We defend Twenty20 cricket

November 15, 2009 South Africa

Loots Bosman and Graeme Smith should play on ‘hard’ now

< 1 minute readLoots Bosman and Graeme Smith today batted in international cricket as if they were playing an overfamiliar cricket computer game on easy setting. Simply aim at cow corner and press the six-hit button. It was astonishingly clean hitting. Almost robotic. Alastair Cook erred hugely in not positioning a fielder on

November 13, 2009 England

Eoin Morgan is the England Twenty20 batsman you most want to watch

< 1 minute readWe’d rate Eoin Morgan’s 85 not out off 45 balls as the best Twenty20 performance we’ve seen from an England player. The six that he ever-so-gently placed onto the roof of a three-storey building outside the ground would ordinarily have been the most remarkable shot played in the match. We

November 13, 2009 England / Extras

No Ashes on Sky means no money for English cricket

< 1 minute readThis seems to be the crisis facing the ECB as it seems increasingly likely that home Ashes series will be shown on free TV from now on. We’ve a few thoughts about this. Sponsorship of the England team If we were sponsoring England, we’d pay more if we thought four

November 12, 2009 Pakistan

Younus Khan resigns, quits, rests, stands down, walks

< 1 minute readYounus Khan has had another captaincy wobble. It seems half the team think he’s a tool and won’t do what he says. This is a bit annoying for Pakistan supporters, because when Younus has been in charge and the players have made half an effort to follow him, the team

November 11, 2009 County cricket / Cricket books | reviews and recommendations

Reviews of No Boundaries by Ronnie Irani

< 1 minute readAt what point does a book become so bad that you actually find yourself wanting to read it? There are some great reviews of Ronnie Irani’s book, No Boundaries, on Amazon: “I once bought a Man United shirt with the name of Keith Gillespie on the back days before the

November 11, 2009 England

England losing warm-up matches at the start of a tour

< 1 minute readSeasoned England watchers know that England losing warm-up matches is just an unpleasant fact of life. It’s like that gnawing sense that something’s very, very wrong when you wake up in the morning. Just reach for your bottle of supermarket brand gin that you keep on the bedside table and

November 10, 2009 Extras

We went to the Sky offices

3 minute readWe popped into the Sky offices last weekend to go and see some people from The Wisden Cricketer. Where are Sky’s offices? The address is the not-at-all-made-up-sounding 123 Buckingham Palace Road. We were confronted with a large glass wall with a small glass revolving door in the middle of it.