King Cricket
“I find this series depressing, yet very engaging”
How’s that for a recommendation? That’s a Cricinfo comment about the fifth and final part of our short story set in the not-so-distant future.
If you can’t remember what’s happened already, here’s a full set of links.
10 AppealsStill ahead of the curve
The fourth instalment of our episodic short story has been published over at Cricinfo and there’s still little sign of administrative fiction becoming a popular new literary genre.
The final part should appear later in the week.
4 AppealsTwo more parts of a thing
We did consider upping our game with regards to post titles, but then we thought: ‘Why risk it?’
Cricinfo have published two more episodes of our increasingly bleak cricket administration short story.
Happy New Year. Here are some links.
2 AppealsA short story about cricket
We’ve written an episodic short story about taking rational decisions based on empirical evidence. You’d think that every cricket writer would be jumping on that crowd-pleasing bandwagon, but weirdly they’re not. Short stories about sports administration are in worryingly short supply during this year’s festive period. It’s inexplicable.
Part one was published at Cricinfo today. If you hate it, make sure you read the next few instalments as well so that you can really compound that hatred. If you like it, make sure you read the next few instalments as well so that the novelty wears off and you learn to hate it.
4 AppealsGordon Greenidge at Lord’s in 1984
Gordon Greenidge is always worth writing about and his 214 not out in the fourth innings at Lord’s in 1984 deserves better treatment than we’ve given it over at Cricinfo.
Stu and Ash are going to take a break for a while now and we’re going to do something a bit different with our next few pieces at Cricinfo. We’re going to try something a little more subtle. The provisional title is Captain Maximum and his Six-Hitting Marketing Machine of Misery.
It’s not called that. It’s so subtle we can’t even come up with a sensible name for it if we’re honest. It’s actually possible that we’re confusing ’subtle’ with ‘insipid’. Guess we’ll find out if it gets rejected or via the comments if it does get approved.
Anyway, Gordon Greenidge.
14 AppealsAn open letter to King Cricket
Dear Sirs,
We the undersigned wish to register our not inconsiderable lack of a suitable absence of displeasure with the current state of article writing on your website. In particular, certain facts that are facts go repeatedly unmentioned in some articles, certainly nowhere near enough as they shouldn’t be, viz:
- Lancashire are the current County Champions
- England are the world T20 Champions
- England is world #1 Test Nation
- Lancashire are the current County Champions
When what future historians will undoubtedly refer to as the Annus Mirabilis (lit. up yours Aussies) happened, there was much talk of joyous celebrations lasting for decades. But honestly, it must have been weeks since any of the articles here mentioned that Lancashire are the current County Champions.
To be fair, it isn’t just you. We’ve had to write to Nigella about her latest Christmas cookery book, which is notable only for a complete lack of throdkin recipes, and the impact of being top Test nation is very sadly lacking from almost all economic forecasts for the UK.
Moreover, the latest edition of that definitive work on the visual representation of data, “Venn Will I See You Again” by Professors Heinz Wolff and Lesley Judd, doesn’t contain a single reference to the newly developed subject of Hubristic Graphing. It’s a sodding disgrace.
The internationally accepted minimum is two mentions of Lancashire per week plus six mentions of England per day. It is permissible to substitute a mention of Australia’s current Test ranking for one of the England ones. Please correct this or else.
Sir Glen Chapple
Sheikh Bert the Merciless, KBE, Astronomer Royal, Legion D’Honeur
Saint James of Anderson
Lord Moores of Macclesfield
David Bumble Lloyd, STC
We feel we’ve got away with this one a bit
We wrote about Sachin Tendulkar at Cricinfo and, as Bert suggested, we criticised his technique. So far, most people seem to have correctly identified the joke.
We feel we’re being sucked in. Next time we’ll write a really innocuous piece about Ian Austin and thousands of people will send us turds in the mail. Well the joke’s on them, because the packages won’t fit through our letterbox and then we won’t go and collect them from the post office.
Read our piece about Tendulkar’s underwhelming 200 not out here.
23 AppealsCricinfo approval rating dips
Should we take it badly if someone says, “This is the ONLY article that I dont read on Page 2″ about our work?
Hard to say, isn’t it? If they haven’t read it, they can’t really evaluate the quality. Or maybe they’re saying that they take in the article in some other way. Maybe they print it off and then eat it.
If you’d like to read or eat our latest Cricinfo piece, you can find it here.
17 AppealsBack to what’s important
We’ve got behind Australia to a quite sickening degree in recent days. We’ve intimated that South African defeats can be enjoyable and we’ve sympathised – SYMPATHISED – with Australians when they weren’t able to win a Test series after one little catastrophe.
Well enough of that. Let’s get back to the catastrophe. Not content with writing about it here and basing an entire weekly newsletter on it for The Cricketer, we’ve also written about the 47 all out for Cricinfo.
14 AppealsWasim Akram and irresponsible swing
For those who missed it, this is our latest Stu and Ash piece for Cricinfo. It’s about Wasim Akram against England in the 1992 World Cup, which is well worth seeking out on YouTube by the way. We’d link to a video, but, you know, we’d have to open another tab and then copy the link and basically we’re just feeling really lazy.
Several of the people commenting on this latest Cricinfo piece seemed to actually quite like it. We’re not too sure what to make of that. It’s very hard to work out what constitutes ’success’ when it comes to our Cricinfo articles.
10 Appeals
