Three problems with the Twenty20 Cup.

(1) While the matches are at a great time for supporters, they’re at a rubbish time for people writing about them because they finish during the beer hours.
(2) There are about ten matches a day and we quite simply don’t have ten pieces of concentration to utilise. We have half a concentration, which we spread thinly.
(3) There are about ten matches EVERY day, so when you write about one match, it’s already midway through the next one and when that writing appears on the site, the second match has finished and everyone’s looking forward to a third match.

Hopefully the county restructuring will address some of this, but we’re not counting on it. There have been any number of brilliant ideas about what to do, yet the only plans that are being bandied about by Giles Clarke and the ECB are demented ones involving picking names out of a hat to decide what division teams will appear in, because they want to abolish promotion and relegation.

Joe Denly hit 91 off 57 balls on Sunday. No-one cares now though.

Tags: Joe Denly, ones to watch by King Cricket
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While largely overshadowed by Rob Key’s silky 26, Joe Denly’s 149 was still a weighty contribution towards a Kent total of 250.

Kent lost, but you can’t really blame No Pants for that. Has anyone got any information on that nickname’s origins yet? If you do know and it’s a bit boring, don’t tell us.

Tags: Joe Denly, county cricket, ones to watch by King Cricket
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Rob Key’s Special Powers are already being passed onto Joe Denly. Kent’s opening pair started the season with a hundred apiece and an opening stand of 225. POWER UP!

Whatever Leeds-Bradford UCCE threw at them, Key and Denly countered it with disdain.

Harry Gurney: Countered with disdain!

Richard Browning: Countered with disdain!

James Lord: Countered with disdain!

Duncan Snell: Countered with disdain!

Tom Pringle: Disdainfully countered!

Having thoroughly and comprehensively POWERED UP during this warm-up fixture, Rob Key and Joe Denly should now remain FULLY POWERED for the remainder of the season.

In fact, it would be no surprise if, later in the season, Rob Key has been SO FULL OF POWER for SO LONG that he starts to glow white hot and consequently discovers A WHOLE NEW LEVEL OF POWER.

It would be no surprise at all if that happened. No surprise whatsoever. It probably will happen. In fact, it’s such a cast-iron certainty let’s start taking bets as to when it’s going to occur.

Tags: Joe Denly, Rob Key, ones to watch by King Cricket
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Joe Denly or James Hildreth? Joe Denly or James Hildreth? Joe Denly’s nickname is ‘No Pants’. Decision made.

Plus Joe Denly gets to open the batting with Rob Key. Spend any amount of time in Rob’s vicinity and a little bit of genius is bound to rub off. We managed to do an entire wordsearch once while we were waiting in a car outside his house. Ordinarily we’d never have managed that, but Rob must have left just a faint whiff of genius in his bin and it must have attached itself to us during the rummaging.

Joe Denly’s so lucky. He gets to do ‘talking’ with Rob in between overs. We’ve got a whole shoebox full of questions for Rob for when we get to have a go at ‘talking’.

One time we were watching Rob on telly and we told him to leave the next delivery if he wanted us to buy him some ice cream. He played the next delivery and we could tell that he was telling us he didn’t want ice cream. If we can communicate that well with him USING ONLY OUR MIND, think how well we could communicate with him using ‘talking’.

Joe Denly’s 22 and a handy batsman. We’ll be watching him out of the corner of our eye while the main part of our eye is FIRMLY TRAINED on Rob Key.

More cricketers to watch in 2008.

Tags: Joe Denly, Rob Key, county cricket, ones to watch by King Cricket
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