King Cricket

December 14, 2007 India

India’s young fast bowlers – it’s a bit overwhelming

3 minute read India used to really struggle for quick bowlers. These days they seem to have a new Next Big Thing just about every week. We can think of six young, decent, Indian quick bowlers from a standing start and with only three brews powering our tiny little brain cells. We’ve assumed

December 13, 2007 India

Virender Sehwag sidles up to Yuvraj Singh looking all serious and that

2 minute read India have named their squad for the four Test tour of Australia. It’s not totally straightforward. We’ll talk about the bowlers separately, but batting-wise the big news is the return of Virender Sehwag. We’ve read that India can’t pick Sehwag in the squad and not play him, which is technically

December 13, 2007 England / Sri Lanka

Michael Vaughan and Alastair Cook keep panic at bay

< 1 minute read It was far from a classic Test match. It felt like it was mapped out from the start and the players were just doing what they were expected to do. Now we’re no strangers to going through the motions, but we don’t put a professional veneer on like the cricketers

December 12, 2007 Australia

Luke Pomersbach is a lucky son of a gun

< 1 minute read Tell you what, you’ve got to be pretty darned lucky to be branded ‘a son of a gun’ on this site. Luke Pomersbach is that lucky. Pomersbach plays for Western Australia, but he’s currently serving a ban because he’s a big ole booze hound. Rumour has it that he was

December 12, 2007 England / Sri Lanka

Did anything happen today?

< 1 minute read Sri Lanka looked set for a large lead yesterday and Mahela Jayawardene had scored a hundred. At the close of play today Sri Lanka had a large lead and Mahela Jayawardene had scored a hundred. Very little else appears to have happened. So what shall we all do? A Test

December 11, 2007 England / Sri Lanka

Mahela Jayawardene not mad keen on getting out

2 minute read Prior to this match there was a bit of discussion as to whether it was best to bat first or second. It tends to be a brave move to insert the opposition upon winning the toss, but The Sinhalese Sports Club Ground in Columbo has something of a reputation for

December 11, 2007 Sri Lanka

How to get Mahela Jayawardene out

< 1 minute read Have a tantrum. That’s what we’d do. Have a real, world-class, multi-award winning, all-time-hall-of-fame hissy fit. A proper toy-flinging, teary-eyed shamefest. The key is to act so insufferably badly that Jayawardene can’t look at you for embarrassment. You want to make him think: ‘This is intolerable. I literally can’t bear

December 11, 2007 India / Pakistan

Misbah-ul-Haq – another glitteringly sedate hundred

< 1 minute read Misbah-ul-Haq’s one of those players who gets his own post even if we’ve got nothing to say now. He got 133 not out in a match where runs are as inevitable as weekend overeating. He did his best to stand out from the crowd though – for much of his

December 10, 2007 England / Sri Lanka

Bad decisions don’t decide a Test

2 minute read England will be pretty disappointed to have only made 351 and they’ll point to a couple of rough decisions as being one cause, but if they’re a serious Test side, they should forget about them. It’s not like they’re going to get overturned after the match. Don’t dwell on it.

December 10, 2007 India / Pakistan

Sourav Ganguly’s double hundred

2 minute read Well, at least his highest Test score’s higher than his highest one-day international score now. We saw his highest score in one-day internationals, 183 against Sri Lanka in the 1999 World Cup, and there are similarities with yesterday’s knock. On both occasions Ganguly was largely overshadowed by his batting partner

@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