King Cricket

December 17, 2008 England

Something about Vodafone and England

< 1 minute read We’re not interested in sponsorship really. However, we do hate people with corporate titles and we outright loathe meaningless PR speak, so we did actually make the effort to read the news about Vodafone not sponsoring England any more. We also hate Vodafone because they have ‘-fone’ in their name,

December 16, 2008 England / India

Virender Sehwag wins two matches

1 minute read India couldn’t have won the first Test without Sachin Tendulkar’s contribution, but we’re a great believer in sportsfolk affecting the opposition and influencing matches that way. We wrote about how Virender Sehwag’s approach to batting turns bowlers into smeared-panted long-hop machines, but we reckon he transformed the whole England side

December 15, 2008 England / India

Sachin Tendulkar wins the Test match

< 1 minute read Watching Sachin Tendulkar bat is always a disappointment for us. It’s not his fault. He’s had the decency to be a batting genius and we can’t really ask much more of the man. The fault lies with our own expectations. When you watch Sachin Tendulkar at work, you expect to

December 15, 2008 England / India

A fun cricket game

< 1 minute read What a match. A victory for cricket being about hitting a ball with a bat as well, not it being about some middle-aged men in suits planning what car to buy next – which is what the game can often feel like these days. Nobody cares about your status symbols,

December 14, 2008 England / India

Virender Sehwag’s batting approach

2 minute read When Virender Sehwag bats, bowlers go to pieces. It’s a good approach. Viv Richards used to do something similar. He’d blaze away when he first came in and then when the field went back, he’d change his approach. The fielding side were on the back foot, he’d got his eye

December 14, 2008 New Zealand / West Indies

Jerome Taylor somehow hits a Test hundred

< 1 minute read Jerome Taylor had a Test average of 13.66 before this match, a first-class average of 12.61 and a top score of 40. Somehow he hit 106 against New Zealand. After his hundred, Taylor said: “It was the sort of pitch that, once you got in, it got easier.” How did

December 13, 2008 England / India

Andrew Strauss and Paul Collingwood in partnership

< 1 minute read It doesn’t make the heart race, but it is brilliant. Andrew Strauss now averages 61.85 in Tests in India. Paul Collingwood averages 68.20. Kevin Pietersen averages 27.62. Sometimes you need to clog your way to success and Strauss and Collingwood can bunt singles with the best of them. Strauss has

December 12, 2008 New Zealand

Tim McIntosh summons the spirit of Mark Richardson

< 1 minute read It strikes us that New Zealand are a side who can benefit from a good old-fashioned batting line-up with a trio of blockers at the top of the order followed by the strokemakers. Kiwi batsmen do tend to be one or the other and an early stultathon will set the

December 11, 2008 England / India

Zaheer Khan – average record belies his class

< 1 minute read Zaheer Khan deserves better than 2-36 and we won’t begrudge him if he gets more wickets. There are talented bowlers out there who have unflattering career records and Zaheer’s one of them. It seems wrong to watch a bowler unveil such a range of skills and then see that he’s

December 11, 2008 England

Graham or Graeme Swann?

< 1 minute read Graeme Swann’s selection for England has opened up an old, rancid can of worms. Worms of spelling. Spelling worms. To rid the world of these vile spelling worms once and for all, Graeme Swann is a Graeme, not a Graham. Here are some more famous cricketing Grahams/Graemes: Graham Gooch Graeme

Dammit.

I am now hugely>i< confused Enjoyed Into The Tangled Bank very much, Mr P/fiendishly cunning imposter.

@Lev the imposter (maybe). What we do in private stays private ;-) ...and apologies for taking credit for being the…

@KC. Ahh, bu**er. Yes, confused by the birding reference.

It was a classic of the genre. Not sure we've ever seen one go further.

Hats off to Harry Brook’s very particular ‘steamrollered pancake pitch’ set of skills

Let’s pick the All-Time Greatest Middle-Aged XI

Less than the sum of their parts: Six Test batting partnerships that invariably disappointed

Five Graham Thorpe innings that were equal parts silly, brilliant and vital

Show me the money. Inattention and monetisation in Major League Cricket, The Hundred and Test cricket