King Cricket

September 22, 2009 Australia / England

How Joe Denly got to play for England

2 minute readThis isn’t specifically about Joe Denly. He’s just the example. It’s about being a young English cricketer and what you have to do to play for the national side. It’s also about Australia’s wicketkeeper, Tim Paine. Paine and Denly are just starting their careers and have been opening the batting

September 21, 2009 Australia / England

Why are England so bad at one-day cricket?

2 minute readYou can come up with immediate reasons, like how badly they’ve been batting of late, but take a step back. Why are England so consistently bad at one-day cricket? We’ve been thinking about this a bit and our theory revolves around player rotation. One-day internationals, more than Test cricket, revolve

September 20, 2009 England

England’s one-day all-rounders

< 1 minute readAre they going to win a game with the bat? Are they going to win a game with the ball? Luke Wright Dimitri Mascarenhas Tim Bresnan Adil Rashid There’s room for players who chip in, rather than deciding matches on their own, but there seem to be altogether too many

September 20, 2009 England

Graeme Swann interviews

< 1 minute readYou want Graeme Swann to be man of the match every time he plays, because he’s head and shoulders above everyone else in world cricket when it comes to the post-match interview. Today’s offering after a consolation win that followed six consecutive defeats: “Everyone talks about this big word ‘momentum’.

September 18, 2009 England

How bad is England’s one-day batting?

< 1 minute readFour fifties between them in six one-day internationals. That’s bad. Remember when you were at school and someone had egg sandwiches. ‘Ughh. Who’s got egg?’ someone would ask. Think of the faces everyone made when they realised someone had egg. There were probably even a few children crying, because having

September 17, 2009 County cricket

How do Durham win their games?

< 1 minute readWe thought we should probably mention Durham’s victory in the County Championship. How did they win? The same way all teams win in the longer formats – through their bowlers. Durham can boast of the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 9th highest wicket takers in the County Championship first division. Look

September 16, 2009 England

Why Andrew Flintoff turned down a contract that would have prevented him from making almost painful amounts of cash

< 1 minute readIt was because of the bungee clause. Flintoff’s agent, Andrew Chandler, explains why his client has turned down an incremental England contract which might have stopped him playing in the occasional lucrative Twenty20 tournament: “There were one or two things in it that made it difficult to sign like he

September 16, 2009 Australia

Ricky Ponting is getting old

2 minute readRicky Ponting must be nearing retirement age because we’re starting to appreciate him. We read a statistic the other day that about one in five top seven Test batsmen average over 50. That’s a ludicrous figure, but players like Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting were averaging over 50 long before

September 15, 2009 England

England’s batting card and score

< 1 minute readIt’s rare that a side scores 299 in a one-day international and yet has such an underwhelming batting card. Who got the runs? Somehow, it was no-one. To be fair, Eoin Morgan’s 58 off 41 balls was pretty eye-catching, but it still falls slightly short of significance somehow, particularly after

September 15, 2009 County cricket

Chris Read is really bad at batting

< 1 minute readWe’ve watched Chris Read bat several times and we wouldn’t say he wowed us with the pristine aesthetics of his strokes. Nevertheless, he must tire of the way people talk about him like he should come into bat after Devon Malcolm, even if Devon had food poisoning and couldn’t find