King Cricket

February 6, 2008 Regulars

England adopt subtle form of mental disintegration

< 1 minute read So-called mental disintegration can take many forms. You might play on a batsman’s confidence or you might try and aggravate him into losing his cool. In this picture, Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell and Ryan Sidebottom have teamed up in an effort to make Ross Taylor jealous. Ross Taylor considers himself

February 5, 2008 England / New Zealand

Dimitri Mascarenhas is handy down the order

< 1 minute read England don’t often find batsman who are pretty good. They have good and great batsmen at the top of the order and they have rubbish and not awful batsmen down the order, but there always seems to be a number eight-shaped hole in the batting card. In one-day cricket at

February 5, 2008 England / New Zealand

England v New Zealand – masterful cricket scheduling

< 1 minute read Great news for fans of England v New Zealand matches – today’s Twenty20 match was the first of 19 consecutive international fixtures between the two sides. Surely what everyone’s hoping is that one team gets on top early on and shows itself to be vastly superior to the other team.

February 4, 2008 England

Alastair Cook in one-day cricket

2 minute read Alastair Cook hit a hundred in England’s latest warm-up. The bowlers he had to face might not have been the world’s finest, but he hit 138 not out off 140 balls and every time he does that he’ll be getting a little bit more comfortable with one-day cricket. There are

February 1, 2008 Australia / India

India, world Twenty20 champions, bat like pillocks

< 1 minute read We’ve no problem branding professional cricketers as ‘pillocks’. That’s the kind of fearless reportage you get here at King Cricket. We’re not afraid to bandy strong words around. We’re not afraid to bandy anything, because we’re not totally sure what bandying entails. Irfan Pathan was the sole Indian batsman to

February 1, 2008 Regulars

Somerset adopt undersized helmets made out of fruit

< 1 minute read Bang it in short.

January 31, 2008 England

England Lions: five for Panesar, Flintoff to appear at boundary edge

< 1 minute read Five wickets for Monty Panesar – there’s a sentence that’s been conspicuous by its absence of late. He only did it for England Lions though, who we’re going to start calling England Second XI, because that’s much more accurate. If you’re going to name one of your national teams after

January 29, 2008 Australia

No bowling for Shaun Tait for a bit

< 1 minute read This is bad news. We’d already earmarked Shaun Tait as Matthew Hayden’s successor in the role of ‘most detestably arrogant Australian’. With his face, his face and also his face, he had all the attributes to make the position his own for years to come. But he’s disappointingly fragile. He’s

January 28, 2008 Australia

Adam Gilchrist’s career

3 minute read Australia were the best side in the world before Adam Gilchrist was promoted to the Test side. Afterwards, they took on an air of invincibility. How can a side take the fifth Australian wicket and be faced with a batsman who middles the ball with his first stroke, throws the

January 28, 2008 Australia / India

Australia fail on a flat pitch

< 1 minute read For years most Australian Test wickets have been flatter than a pancake ironed by an anal retentive with the world’s most accurate spirit level. Aussie batsmen have filled their boots knowing they had the bowlers to win a match on any surface. Last year, at Adelaide, there were two innings

@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.

bat, obviously, not bar. They already tried the latter in the bad old days

Sides are often said to 'throw the bar' in an effort to score quickly, but it seems today Ben Stokes…

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