King Cricket

April 6, 2009 County cricket / England

Rob Key is about to become England captain

< 1 minute readHe is, he is, he is, he is, he is, he is, he is. Rob Key is in England’s provisional 30-man squad for the World Twenty20 tournament, which, considering Andrew Strauss’s absence, puts him in prime position to take up his rightful place as captain/king of England. Most media outlets

April 6, 2009 England

Andrew Flintoff’s celebrations

< 1 minute readWe’re a bit worried about Andrew Flintoff. Not: ‘Oh my God, there’s a badger in the back seat of the car AND HE’S LOOKING RIGHT AT ME’ worried, but worried nonetheless. When he was taking his wickets against the West Indies on Friday, he did some posing. We’re not massively

April 4, 2009 England

Andrew Flintoff’s hat trick against West Indies

< 1 minute readOne-day hat tricks tend to be fun rather than jaw dropping, but it’s still very good to see Andrew Flintoff taking wickets. For all Flintoff’s good bowling, wickets are too rare and there needs to be more of this. We made two rather obvious conclusions after the big man dismissed

April 4, 2009 England

England one day performances against West Indies

< 1 minute readEngland might not be the best 50 over side and they might not be the best Twenty20 side, but take them on at Fifty46.2, Fifty20 or Twenty-nine29 at your peril. They’re producing stunning performances in some of the newer formats. This evidence is scant enough to draw far reaching conclusions

April 3, 2009 County cricket

Mark Davies, Durham – cricketer to watch in 2009

< 1 minute readA second Durham player and a second Durham seam bowler. Mark Davies is always one to watch, even if we erroneously overlooked him for the first time last year, thinking he wouldn’t get a game. We’ve a faint suspicion that Davies is the kind of bowler who’d get a lot

April 3, 2009 County cricket

Jim Foat – legend among non-legends

< 1 minute readJim Foat was a batsman for Gloucestershire in the Seventies. You probably haven’t heard of him; he wasn’t a great batsman. Jim Foat played 91 first-class matches and 129 one-day matches. First class average: 18.60. One-day average: 15.19. He didn’t take a wicket. Over 251 innings in first-class matches and

April 2, 2009 County cricket

Liam Plunkett, Durham – cricketer to watch in 2009

< 1 minute readLiam Plunkett’s partly representing Sajid Mahmood here as well (if it’s possible for one person to represent an entirely different person). It’s that whole ‘actually, those bowlers aren’t shite’ sentiment that we expressed a month or so ago. Both bowlers are synonymous with Duncan Fletcher prematurity, but that word ‘prematurity’

April 2, 2009 County cricket

Cricketers to watch in 2009

2 minute readWe’ve named cricketers to watch in 2006, 2007 and 2008 and we’ve not been 100 percent wrong about all of them. Of the 2006 vintage, Graeme Swann, Matt Prior and Sajid Mahmood went on to play Tests and Mark Davies is knocking around again after a couple of years of

April 1, 2009 Regulars

Bo conspicuously renouncing his indifference to cricket

< 1 minute readSam writes: In light of England’s well-documented opening batsman problems, I thought I would canvas opinion within my household regarding a return for Taunton’s favourite son. Bo reflects wistfully on the early promise of an uncomplicated West Country left-hander with minimal foot movement but tons of talent. ‘137. Lord’s. June

March 31, 2009 Match report

England Women v Pakistan Women ODI

< 1 minute readGed writes: Following several days of enforced 5am starts, I was looking forward to sleeping in a bit longer on Thursday, especially as I was cream-crackered by 10pm Wednesday. But of course, once you’ve got your body used to early starts, it just does its own thing. So although I