4 minute read Not every tournament needs an opening ceremony. We’ll let you in on a secret. We are not a fast waker-upper. Our daughter sometimes wanders into our room at an unconscionable hour and announces, “it’s morning,” in an indignant tone. It is impossible for us to convey the full horror of
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Come and chair a county cricket club – knowledge and reasoning not essential
4 minute read It was fun to get an insight into the reasoning of some of English cricket’s key decision-makers. Sorry, not fun – gravely concerning and wildly infuriating. There have been two big discussion points relating to county cricket in recent times: Institutional racism Its inability to produce decent Test cricketers As
Continue readingFast bowling: County cricket’s diesels and the unprepared Test batters they create
3 minute read In the wake of England’s Ashes failings, there’s been a lot of talk about how the County Championship is played on pitches that encourage medium-pacers. Pitches are not the big problem. There was a good recent piece about county pitches by CricBuzz’s Rob Johnston. The overly-reduced version of that article
Continue reading17 of the best, worst and weirdest cricket moments of 2021
7 minute read Here is a bunch of stuff that happened in 2021. It is not an exhaustive list, because an exhaustive list chronicling the activities of multiple people across an entire year would take far longer than a year to read. It is just a selection of striking cricket moments from the
Continue readingLife at Yorkshire and what we should be saying about it
5 minute read It’s time to write an article about Yorkshire because eventually the absence of something can start to look deeply suspicious. In 2006, before this site even had its own domain name, we made a snarky comment about how Adil Rashid had made a splash by being a Yorkshire-born player of
Continue readingCounty cricket says 2020 and 2021 didn’t happen
3 minute read You can see where they’re coming from. But pretty sure they did. What we’re talking about here is of course the format of the 2022 County Championship. Nothing wrong with the format itself. (Oh no, wait, it’s gone back to being lopsided and ridiculous.) The (new) issue is how they’ve
Continue readingLancashire have qualified for the 2021 Bob Willis Trophy
2 minute read The groups-then-divisions format of this year’s County Championship achieves a couple of significant things. (1) It creates a magnificent climax where the top teams are all pitted against each other and vying for overall glory. (2) It creates a great morass of meaningless fixtures where everyone else is vying for
Continue readingIt’s the final round of qualifiers for the Bob Willis Trophy
2 minute read The most important match of the county season is just around the corner. TBC v TBC at Lord’s from September 28 to October 2. The Game of the Falling Leaves, they call it – The Bob Willis Trophy Final. Quite why they call it a final is beyond us. It’s
Continue readingA report from the first day of the Hundred at Lord’s
3 minute read This is the first of two match reports from the inaugural season of the Hundred. Here’s the second one. King Cricket match reports focus on what it was like to be at the game – not the match itself. Regular King Cricket contributor, Ged Ladd, writes… Daisy and I resolved
Continue readingObservations after half-watching the Hundred on TV with a couple of kids milling about the place
5 minute read We don’t really want to be an ambassador for the Hundred and nor are we in the #opposethehundred camp. Our natural habitat is the muddy middle ground, taking ineffectual potshots at both sides. But let’s for now bypass the argument about whether the competition represents the future or death of
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