< 1 minute read It’s nice to see bowlers being decisive in a Twenty20 match. Far too often they might as well just glue different mugshots onto a bowling machine and use that instead. In the Champions League final, Mumbai successfully defended 139. For a large proportion of the match, the commentators were talking
Continue readingAuthor: King Cricket
Otherwise known as Alex Bowden, a lapsed cricket journalist who has written for ESPNCricinfo, wisden.com, Cricket 365, The Cricketer and plenty of other places.
Links to some non-cricket writing and a bit more background here.
Is Sachin Tendulkar preventing India from having fast bowlers?
< 1 minute read This week, Zaheer Khan said: “Indian bodies are not designed to bowl fast.” Assuming that Zaheer has chosen his words carefully, this seems to indicate that he believes that humans are ‘designed’. If they are designed by God, and Sachin is God, then we can conclude that the Mumbai batsman’s
Continue readingRunners-up in the Champions League T20
< 1 minute read Is there ambiguity or a double meaning in that title? Certainly the former, possibly the latter, depending how things go for Somerset tomorrow. We did a piece for Cricinfo, which, on the face of it, is about Somerset being in the Champions League despite being perennial runners-up. That sentence makes
Continue readingRoyal Challengers Bangalore hit a six off the final ball to win
< 1 minute read We’ve seen a handful of games where one team needs a six off the final ball to win – it’s hard to beat. We’ll talk you through the climax of Bangalore’s win over South Australia in the Twenty20 Champions League: Some Aussie guy ran in and bowled and Bangalore’s wicketkeeper
Continue reading2011 County Championship players to watch review
2 minute read Suppose we should take a look at how our 2011 County Championship players to watch fared. Adam Lyth, Yorkshire 553 runs at 26.33 Yeah, that’s pretty shoddy. James Hildreth, Somerset 893 runs at 38.82 That’s okay. Ben Stokes, Durham 628 runs at 48.30 and 17 wickets at 33.00 Three hundreds,
Continue readingMiddlesex v Surrey Twenty20 match report
2 minute read Ged writes: Ged Ladd & Co Ltd quietly works wonders for world cricket. People from all manner of countries where cricket is barely played (e.g. Bulgaria, Switzerland, Nigeria, Russia, Belgium, USA, Italy, China, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa) have been introduced to cricket through our company scratch matches and T20
Continue readingA pigeon being conspicuously indifferent to Rob Key
< 1 minute read The Dawg writes: I’m all for animals being conspicuously indifferent to cricket, but have you seen who is at the crease? This is taken from a Kent v Surrey T20 game at the Oval. That pigeon should show more respect. If you’ve got a picture of an animal being conspicously
Continue readingMarketing England one-day matches in 2012
< 1 minute read The marketing men and women have got a tough task on their hands trying to generate interest in England’s 13 one-day internationals and four Twenty20 internationals next summer. This is because: There are far, far, far too many matches No-one in England gives a toss about short-form cricket outside of
Continue readingAre you convinced by Jade Dernbach and his variations?
2 minute read We’re not making a point of criticising England’s newer bowlers. We’re just pointing out that we aren’t living in a bounteous land of champagne fountains and gold furniture. Players are being talked about as if they’re staggeringly gifted when they’re not. The English treat one-day cricket like some mystical oddity.
Continue readingStuart Meaker and England selection
< 1 minute read In years gone by, you wouldn’t have trusted the England selectors to identify the best cricketer on an episode of A Question Of Sport, but this batch, led by Geoff Miller, has earned respect. Even so, it doesn’t pay to get too clever. Earlier this year, we said that Stuart
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