Rob Key

A pigeon being conspicuously indifferent to Rob Key

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 indifferent to cricket, send it to king@kingcricket.co.uk.

Rob Key and “ha ha”-gate

Rob Key’s on Twitter now. We knew we had to make contact, but we were painfully aware that we’ve spent the last three or four years being mental about him on the internet. This made the situation a little awkward.

We knew Rob had seen the greatest post of all time, so we asked him if he happened to have a website where he’d published weird pictures of us, saying it would make the situation easier for us if he had.

Rob said:

“Ha ha”

During a sleepless night, we considered this response at great length. It could mean three things.

1. Rob thought we were funny and expressed this using the words ‘ha ha’
2. Rob thinks we’re annoying and gave a shortened, sarcastic laugh using the words ‘ha ha’ rather than ‘ha ha ha’
3. Rob was talking to someone else

After many hours of deliberation, we have decided that Rob thought we were funny. Furthermore, we have also concluded that we are now, unquestionably, ‘best friends forever’.

Despite our BFF friendship status, Rob isn’t following us on Twitter which means that hopefully he won’t see these demented ramblings (unless one of you grasses us up).

Finding out that we write entire posts based on the words ‘ha ha’ might cripple his interaction with us somewhat.

Robert Key and his health and safety wisdom

Sarah Comma Canterbury sent us these, ‘hot off the camera card’.

Ian Botham could learn a hell of a lot from this:

Where Botham removed his helmet and opted for a low-visibility tabard, Rob Key has got everything right.

Rob Key is better than Ian Botham in every conceivable way. Can Rob do anything wrong?

The answer is yes.

That is totally inappropriate footwear for a building site. What if someone were to drop a piece of scaffolding on his foot?

A worrying Rob Key development

Thanks to Bradders for pointing us towards this:

But also not thanks. Pretending things are guns is never cool. Somebody will have told him to do it, but that doesn’t matter. Rob could have gone for bat-as-guitar or bat-as-snooker-cue even. Both would have been better than bat-as-gun.

There’s the sunglasses too. It’s all bad. We feel very disappointed today and we don’t quite know where we go from here.

We’re also wondering whether to move the ‘Rob Key’ child category out of the ‘England’ parent category and back into the ‘county cricket’ one. This really is a low moment.

Rob Key double hundred

It’s not exactly on a par with the 221 he hit in a Test match against the West Indies, but Rob Key’s 261 off 270 balls against Durham today has added a cheese garnish to the plate of cured meat that was England’s World Twenty20 victory. That’s our version of a cherry on a cake, by the way, because we hate cake.

True, Durham’s current side largely consists of those sorts of players where you can’t quite remember if they’re batsmen or bowlers, but Steve Harmison was playing and taking wickets and the next highest score was 43, so this definitely classes as ‘a good knock’.

The fact that this innings featured twice as many runs as Rob had scored in his previous 10 first class innings combined is proof that he has found the on-off switch to his genius and has triumphantly flicked it to ‘on’. Clearly, Rob forgot that he switched his genius off for the winter because he was sick of people asking why he was glowing like the Ready Brek kid.

Glow now, Rob. Glow like THE SUN. Scorch our worthless retinas with your brilliance before ill-advisedly padding up to one pitching on middle in order to save our sight from permanent damage.

Rob Key Surrey rumour falsely monged

That’s the last time we’re monging a rumour – even one about Rob Key. We apologise for our ill-advised mongery and promise it won’t happen again.

You live the life of a rumour mongerer and you die like a rumour mongerererer: in the wrong.

By the way, we’ve heard that Northamptonshire’s Nicky Boje and Andrew Hall join forces in the close season and steal loose change from sleepy tramps.

We heard it from some guy.

A rumour about Rob Key

We’ve heard that he might be moving to Surrey. That isn’t official, but we figure that if we aren’t going to publish rumours about Rob Key, we might as well just jack it all in and take up ice skating.

Much as we’d love to glide majestically across the rink while Danger Zone from the Top Gun soundtrack blared out in the background, we’ve decided to take the more obvious route.

Should Rob Key move to Surrey? No. Surrey are shit – the second worst side in county cricket, to be precise – whereas Kent are going back to Division One. Surrey are rich however, so a move there would be an admission that Rob will never play for England again and also say that he’s content to see out his career in slightly better remunerated obscurity.

If there are people out there who think you deserve a vehicle as if you’re a member of the Hindu pantheon, then you owe it to them to do better than that.

Rob Key’s sanguine outlook

Rob Key’s greatest strength is his don’t-give-a-toss-ishness. It’s the main reason we originally warmed to him, back in the winter of 2002. It’s also why he makes a great captain.

We know what you’re thinking: what about that bat-flinging hissy fit on Twenty20 finals day in 2007?

That was a serene strop of poise and elegance and when his bat flew majestically over the rope, the volley of cussing that followed it sounded like a lullaby sung by a chorus of angels. Rob’s red-faced huffing that day was grace personified and anyone who disagrees is an Australian in disguise, bringing down English cricket from within.

Will Rob play in the fifth Test next week? Dunno, but he won’t jellify if he does.

Rob Key deserves our faith

People thinking second division cricket is just as first-class as first division cricket have bothered us in the past, but now that this view can be exploited, we don’t care quite so much. ‘Not really caring’ is a state we can slip into pretty much at will.

Rob Key’s last three first-class matches have brought him scores of 123, 270 not out and 110. It doesn’t matter if they were bowling underarm, it’s first-class cricket and his average is in the sixties now.

It doesn’t matter that Phil Hughes averaged 143.5 in the second division and has just been dropped by Australia. Averages only count when you want them to count.

And whose should we count? Well, if Robert Key is a glass of chilled champagne, Phil Hughes is half a mug of cold, weak bovril with a turd in it – let’s just say that.

Writing for Cricinfo

We did a piece for Cricinfo. Almost inevitably it features Rob Key.

The surprising part is that we had never previously submitted a Rob Key article to them. We have a 100% strike rate when it comes to submitting articles about Rob Key to Cricinfo. They are clearly receptive…