King Cricket

August 22, 2020 England / Pakistan

On Zak Crawley and being ‘a natural’

3 minute readThe notion of being a natural at something is a wonderful and seductive and funny and misleading thing. Let’s say that you wanted to start playing an instrument again. You used to play the flute when you were at school but then subsequently neglected it and you haven’t picked the

August 21, 2020 County cricket / England

Colin Graves’ gesticulating is simply not good enough

3 minute readYou might be expecting some sort of pithy takedown of Colin Graves’ tenure as ECB chairman here. Don’t get your hopes up. Our headline is brutally literal. We just watched Graves defending The Hundred and other things on Sky Sports and it struck us that his hand gestures were feeble.

August 19, 2020 County cricket

Shall we keep an eye on George Garton or what?

2 minute readIt’s probably social media that’s sapped our taste for talent-spotting. The online world is awash with people predicting great things for players. They’re usually wrong but we know as well as anyone that it’s a numbers game: predict great things for absolutely everyone and then flag up only your ‘hits’

August 18, 2020 Extras

Botham 80 Series wine review

2 minute read“Sir Ian Botham is arguably one of the greatest cricketers that England has ever produced. Known as an all-rounder of the sport, his bowling skills were as feared by opponents as his batting triumphs were rejoiced by his team-mates and country. “For the last 40 years, Sir Ian has been

August 15, 2020 Extras

Was it safe for Sky Sports’ commentators to continue discussing captaincy in that light?

2 minute readThere’s a phenomenon this summer where bad weather is tailing the England cricket team as it bounces between Manchester and Southampton. We are near the former and whenever there hasn’t been cricket, the harsh Mancunian sun has been baking the turf to concrete. We are currently experiencing – and really,

August 12, 2020 England

How well will Chris Woakes have to play before he’s in England’s overseas first XI?

2 minute readChris Woakes swings the ball less than Jimmy Anderson and seams it less than Stuart Broad. As an all-rounder, he isn’t as striking or dynamic as Ben Stokes. He’s still good though, isn’t he? For several years, England figured that even if there wasn’t an exact Chris-Woakes-shaped hole in their

August 9, 2020 England

Buttler, Bairstow and Foakes – England’s embarrassment of adequacy

3 minute read“I’m putting a team together for a job.” “You son of a bitch. I’m in.” In heist movies, whenever they put a team together, everyone’s always the best of the best; the best there’s ever been. You never make do with members of your heist team. You never settle. You

August 7, 2020 England / Features / Pakistan

Please tell us the secret of managing the very difficult emotions that arise when watching the Pakistan bowling attack against England

3 minute readIt’s probably Shoaib Akhtar’s fault. It started with Wasim Akram, obviously. He was the one who first presented us with this idea that the current score might not necessarily be the real score. The scorecard in an early Nineties Lancashire match required a coda. ‘This many runs for this many

August 4, 2020 England / Pakistan / Uncategorized

An England v Pakistan Test series “precap” (with preamble)

4 minute readWe were going to do a recap of the England v Ireland one-dayers, but they haven’t actually finished yet. So instead we thought we’d switch focus and do a ‘precap’ of the Pakistan series. We thought we were being wilfully annoying by using a made-up word like ‘precap’ when we

July 31, 2020 England / Ireland

David Willey is out of step with the world

< 1 minute readTwo examples which highlight how unutterably dreadful David Willey’s timing is. Example one. In March 2019, Sky Sports commentator Ian Ward delivered the definitive expression of incredulity when David Willey opened the bowling against the West Indies in an Alice band. (You may have seen it.) In July 2020, almost