Ravi Bopara’s Test tour of Sri Lanka was complete toss, with innings of eight and 34 on his debut preceding a grim duck sandwich, with two golden ducks as the bread and an altogether meatier seven ball duck as filling.

On that evidence, some people think they’ve seen the back of Ravi Bopara and they’re glad. He doesn’t help his cause by bowling a bit of medium-pace. This is an incredibly bad idea if you’re a batsman, as you inevitably get tarred with the ‘bits and pieces’ brush. Yes, there is such a brush. We’ve seen it. It’s huge.

Ravi Bopara’s played three innings so far this season. He’s hit 150, 99 (off 87 balls) and 136 not out (next highest score - 27). He averaged 62 last season. This is a serious batsman.

So at 22, it would be foolish to discard Bopara. It would be wasteful too. You should never give up on players after a bad series. Sometimes it’s the making of them. It might have brought a technical flaw to his attention or taught him to approach things differently. Either way, it could prove invaluable.

There’s no better example than the man who’s coached Bopara since he was 15, Graham Gooch.

Gooch said that his struggles against Terry Alderman’s swing in 1989 were the making of him because it taught him to play straighter.

Gooch’s Test record up to and including that series was 73 matches, 4,724 runs, eight hundreds and an average of 36.90. His record after that series was 45 matches, 4,176 runs, 12 hundreds and an average of 51.55.

The best players learn from bad experiences.

Tags: England, Graham Gooch, Ravi Bopara, county cricket by King Cricket
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With a bonus Kent v Essex in the Friends Provident Trophy match report thrown in ABSOLUTELY FREE.

This continues this week’s theme of our not really writing anything. How long can we keep it up?

Lemon Bella writes:

Myself and Indian Skimmer saw our first matches of the season this weekend.

Friday

On Friday we travelled down to the St Lawrence ground to watch the third day of the Championship match against Notts.

We discovered that the coffee machine in the members’ lounge has been changed to an inferior brand and the coffee is now horrible. This is yet another example of the game’s administrators being out of touch with grass roots fans. Moreover, they’ve moved the machine to behind the bar, so we have to talk to someone whenever we want a cup.

Ryan McLaren ate a crumpet at tea time. We didn’t have crumpets. We just had to sit there in the cold with our horrible tasting coffee. Next time, we’re asking Ryan McLaren for a bite of his crumpet.

Yasir Arafat didn’t bat because he had suspected appendicitis. We didn’t believe him because that’s the kind of lie we used to tell to get out of PE lessons at school. He was fine by Sunday, so that proves our suspicions.

Saturday

On the final day of the Championship match we went to the zoo because we didn’t want to sit in the rain for six hours to watch Kent fail to defend 22 runs.

Instead, we walked around in the rain for six hours and saw a lot of animals hiding in their shelters. We got flapped at by an ostrich and bought a soft toy of an African Hunting Dog.

Here is a picture of Nella the African Hunting Dog being indifferent to a video of South Africa playing Australia.

At first we thought that maybe he was only indifferent because he’d seen the game before, but we tested him again and his indifference only increased. This is him failing to inspect the pitch in Indian Skimmer’s back garden.

Sunday

Before the Friends Provident match on Sunday we wandered around Canterbury for 20 minutes trying to find somewhere to buy a newspaper. Everywhere was closed, even WHSmiths. When we got to the ground, Andre Nel had a newspaper, so the Essex team must have stopped at a service station on the way.

Martin Van Jaarsveld scored a century. At breakfast, our B&B owner had told us he would do, but we didn’t believe him. From now on we will listen to his every psychic word. He makes really good poached eggs, so that only bolsters his credibility.

Tags: Animals being conspicuously indifferent to cricket, match report by King Cricket
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If you attend a cricket match this season, please send us a match report. Our submission guidelines are ever-so-straightforward: on no account mention the actual cricket.

Miriam opens the season’s reporting:

I went to this match after church (yes, how very English of me). Having heard so much about him, I was extremely disappointed that Dirty Dirk Nannes wasn’t in the playing 11.

Because of the building work at the Oval, the members were housed in the OCS stand, which I like because it has comfy seats and nice toilets. The toilets have an automatic soap dispenser with a sensor – you just hold your hand under it and it dispenses a measure of soap. You only need to do this another four times and then you have enough soap.

Hot drinks were available for free in the John Major Room, which was very nice, but I really think that they should do barbecues on that little terrace next to the room. If they then got some decent beer in they’d be on to something.

The men I was sitting near had ABSOLUTELY no idea how Duckworth–Lewis worked. They also weren’t sure whether the DL score was the score to win, or to draw. I wanted to say “neither was Shaun Pollock”, but I was a little bit afraid of them.

A lady at the bar said that my hair was beautiful, and touched it without my permission. I didn’t mind too much, though, as I’d actually thought I was having a bad hair day.

I think I was the only person in the crowd wearing pink, and I’m not even a Middlesex fan!

During the rain delay, I got a chicken pie. I wasn’t going to get a pie, but by that stage they were reduced to £1 and it turns out that I AM in fact price-sensitive when it comes to pies.

Also, I lost an earring. So if anyone finds a white pearl 7.5mm stud, it’s mine.

Tags: match report by King Cricket
22 Comments »

Andrew Strauss hit 163 off 130 balls for Middlesex against Surrey in the Friends Provident Trophy yesterday. Strauss seems to have remembered what hundreds are and is now getting them in boundaries: 23 fours and four sixes equals 116.

This isn’t great news for Rob Key, who even if a top order batsmen were dropped, must still be behind Owais Shah - who himself made 55 not out alongside Strauss.

Key’s in England’s ‘Performance Squad’ though, which means that England’s selectors are sort of thinking about him. They certainly know his name, at any rate, so that’s good. All our anonymous phone calls and ‘gifts’ must be making an impact.

Tags: Andrew Strauss, England, county cricket by King Cricket
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Yesterday, we suggested that Shane Bond adopt a disguise in order to represent his country.

It’s okay, he doesn’t need to. Our scouts have identified four young bowlers who could replace the injury-prone paceman for New Zealand.

Ceci has found Ryan Shanebondom:

And Andrew Webster, of Spun Out fame, has picked out no fewer than three potential replacements:

Andrew does concede that Optimus Bond may not be the best option, “as it may lead to him being stalked by Mark Ramprakash.”

Tags: New Zealand, Shane Bond by King Cricket
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Cricket’s short of fast bowlers these days. New Zealand are short of strike bowlers. The upcoming England v New Zealand series is short of stars.

Shane Bond’s a fast strike bowler from New Zealand and is unquestionably one of the stars of international cricket. He’s in England right now, he’s fit and he’s just taken 7-66. But he won’t be featuring in the Test series.

The only people who might be remotely happy about this are the IPL bosses, because Shane Bond signed up with the IPL’s rival, the ICL (which unforgivably came up with the idea of an Indian Twenty20 league).

We don’t reckon the IPL bods would notice if Bond played in this Test series. They’re too busy throwing money around and laughing. If New Zealand are still worried, they could always put him in disguise or something. We promise we wouldn’t let on if we recognised him. And nor would you, right?

Tags: New Zealand, Shane Bond, county cricket by King Cricket
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If Twenty20, in the form of the IPL, is supposed to be conquering the cricket world, nobody told Ravi Shastri, who was addressing the crowd before the first match between Bangalore Royal Challengers and Kolkata Knight Riders.

With an audience already whipped into high fervour, Shastri was given the task of whipping them still higher. Introducing each of the team captains, Shastri started with Rahul Dravid, who was at his home ground.

“A man who’s scored more than 10,000 runs in both forms of the game.”

Both forms of the game, Ravi? Kind of implies that there are only two forms and that Twenty20 isn’t one of them. Ah well, something else for the marketing men to work on.

In the actual cricket, Brendon McCullum didn’t so much loom large as obscure all else. 158 not out was the highest-ever Twenty20 score, beating Cameron White’s 141 for Somerset.

McCullum’s innings came off just 73 balls and featured no fewer than 13 sixes. Nobody else in the match passed 20.

Last month, Mike Selvey wrote an interesting article in The Guardian about how McCullum has fashioned an innovative technique for one-day cricket. Selvey points out that the slips are effectively taken out of play as McCullum’s bat comes down at such an angle that edges fly over them.

That said, we didn’t see slips for the majority of McCullum’s innings yesterday. Nor did we see edges.

In truth, this match didn’t show Twenty20 in its best light. The crowd still went mental when McCullum cleared the rope off the final ball of Kolkata Knight Riders’ innings, but maybe not as mental as they went for his first few sixes. It seems everyone can tire of the six-hitting a little bit.

The best Twenty20 matches are those that go to the wire and Twenty20’s greatest strength is that this is often the case. Every ball counts. Yesterday, the second half of the match didn’t count - although the first half was quite a spectacle.

Tags: Brendon McCullum, IPL by King Cricket
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This appears in a section entitled ‘team mandate’.

Apparently: “We are all Punjabis; by heritage, by birth or by choice.” That’s nice and inclusive and very fortunate when you’re marketing a franchise that doesn’t really have a great deal of regional appeal beyond the name.

So we’re Punjabi. Who knew? What are we like then?

‘Lion-hearted’ - could be a lion cub, we suppose.

‘Spirited’ - Mmm.

‘Passionate’ - Our overriding passion is for Kings XI Punjab merchandise.

‘Hospitable’ - No-one’s ever been round so that we could test this. We’ll assume they’re right.

‘Entertaining’ - Mmm…

‘Brave’ - Oh now you’re just taking the piss.

Tags: IPL by King Cricket
2 Comments »

Now that we’re a Kings XI Punjab fan, we should probably find out something about them. To the Kings XI Punjab website!

It’s loading!

It’s still loading!

At least there’s plenty of time to get worked up about just how AMAZING the site’s going to be.

Plenty of time.

We could have saved far more of these images during the time it took to load, but we figured you’d get the general idea from a mere five.

These web developers are clearly aware of how unbelievably patient internet users are about this kind of thing.

Ooh. It’s almost loaded. Get on the edge of your seat for…

A blank page.

Let’s see if we can at least find out the schedule.

[Close window]

Join us this afternoon for a glimpse as to what happened when we were really, really patient and managed to find out what being a Kings XI Punjab fan MEANS.

Tags: IPL by King Cricket
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“I am a cricket nut. I used to drive up and down the country with Min Patel talking about cricket, cricket, cricket. Every shot, every ball, every field placing, we discussed it at length. I am always talking about cricket – I must be quite a dull fellow.” - Rob Key

That’s amazing! We love cricket too!

What are the chances?

Tags: Rob Key by King Cricket
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