668 writes:

I started at Newcastle station. “A day return to Seaton Carew, please”

“Why do you want to go there?” the ticket guy quizzed me, with genuine amazement and some concern.

“Umm, to watch some cricket.”

“So you’re not taking a kayak ride then?”

“No,” I said. “There is a clue there – I want a return.”

Seaton Carew: a station that is a barren wasteland, nothing on it, no map of where you are or where you might want to go. There was a sign to the beach. I had no idea if I needed the beach. Luckily Gordon Muchall’s Greatest Fan was just a text away and gave me a lift to the cricket ground.

The club ground is small and surrounded by the kind of ambience that only Teesmouth can provide. There was a faint smell in the air. I asked if it was from the Huntsman Tioxide plant, it being a working day, with plenty of white plumes drifting from the cracking towers. Gordon Muchall’s Greatest Fan said it could be the sewage works which was “just over there”. Luckily the smell seemed confined to the car parking area.

All the Surrey players had a variety of kit, so we really could have been down the park. There is a lovely vista of Hartlepool nuclear power station and the associated pylons give vertical landscape interest, usually only added by tall trees in most parks.

As Bert pointed out in April, you might need a house on Teesside to see some of KC’s ones to watch for 2010. So I shouldn’t have been surprised to find myself watching two from that very list – Smith, now Durham’s ex-captain and the Viking, not taken a wicket since being listed and down for a third ankle operation.

It was soon lunch. We went for fish and chips. The gulls by the seafront were conspicuously indifferent to chips – they may have been holding out for fish. I ate all my fish, it was top notch. I purchased a stash of coltsfoot rock.

After lunch, it was soon raining. There was no problem getting into the pavilion bar, as most of the ‘crowd’ swiftly departed. One of the players’ mates had a white sports car. Some of the players spent some time driving about in it. It made an impressive sports car type noise.

Time went by and all the players ended upstairs, playing darts. I did not even try to view this spectacle; I have an inbuilt sense of health and safety. They sounded like a herd of elephants, despite the fact that at least three of them have knackered ankles. Perhaps imitating trouping elephants is the cause of our injury problems? The physio was not on hand to stop this reckless behaviour.

I had another Jagermiester.

I decided against more time on Seaton Carew station and opted for Hartlepool instead – a good move as I was soon on a bus to Darlington. There were no trains due to a power failure at Stockton. Being near to a power station is no guarantee of power, people.

Send your match reports to king@kingcricket.co.uk and on no account mention the cricket itself.

Tags: Match report // 9 Appeals »

We’ve covered both while whoring ourself out to other people this week.

• Kevin Pietersen’s blindingly haphazard knock over at the Wisden Cricketer
• Some earth-shatteringly tedious knocks over at Cricinfo

The Cricinfo one features someone called MCG Gladlyaddled-Smeethington drinking brandy in the sixth tiffin break, if that makes the article sound a bit more intriguing.

Tags: King Cricket // 6 Appeals »

Some England supporters seem upset when their team bowls a side out for double figures. Pakistan are our second favourite side and we want to see them become stronger, but frankly they can do all their run-scoring against other teams.

When England are taking wickets as greedily as Mark Cosgrove taking crisps at a buffet, that’s as good as cricket gets. You have to make the most of it as well, because now we’re in a position where England will be chasing 100-and-odd and could conceivably make a balls of it, making an equally big balls of all the despair about Pakistan being dreadful and not even putting up a fight.

Tags: England cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s // 2 Appeals »

Pretty sure propaganda has to be clearly labelled as such in order for it to be properly effective.

In the comments on our last post, Ceci suggested that the Pakistani batsmen believe what they read. With that in mind, we’d like to put this site forward as official Pakistani cricket team reading matter. Wrong language and all that, but never mind.

At one point in yesterday’s play, Salman Butt brought his bat inside the line of a James Anderson outswinger. Some experts were moved to comment that it was the finest leave they’d seen since Sunil Gavaskar against Garry Sobers in the fifth over of the first innings at Port of Spain in 1971.

This Pakistani batting can be quite exceptional at times.

Tags: Salman Butt // 21 Appeals »

As anyone who’s read a newspaper in the last week or so knows, Pakistan have picked a batting line-up made entirely out of number 11s.

Apparently, Azhar Ali only started playing cricket in February and Umar Amin was spotted trying to affix his batting helmet to his elbow a couple of days ago. When facing the Pakistani bowlers in the nets, most of the top six take guard behind the stumps.

As far as we can tell, there’s very little to go off when judging these batsmen – albeit partly because they keep getting out for jacksh. Nevertheless, we’d really like to see each of the under threat batsmen make huge hundreds in this Test, forcing Mohammad Yousuf to spend the rest of the summer doing Sudoku in his hotel room.

Nothing against Yousuf. It would just be funny.

Tags: Pakistan // 10 Appeals »

With first playing second in the County Championship, it’s a good time for a brief update on the state of the tournament.

Nottinghamshire have been the best side this year. They’re second with a game in hand on Yorkshire, who they’re currently battering. This season Yorkshire have been reliant on the season’s top-scorer, Adam Lyth, who got a duck yesterday and the season’s top wicket-taker, Adil Rashid, who currently has 1-104.

Nottinghamshire haven’t really relied on anyone. They’ve all played well. Their top scorer has actually been Chris Read, who makes runs every year and is somehow still considered a bad batsman.

In this match, David Hussey is on 250 not out. That’s more than handy when your opponents have been bowled out for 178.

In other news, we’ve got a week’s worth of post to open, but show no signs of doing anything with it. This habit of ours annoys some people.

Tags: County cricket news | County Championship, one-day and T20 // 4 Appeals »

“Play as Freddie Flintoff and become an integral player for England in this fast moving, high scoring arcade cricket game.”

That should perhaps read:

“Play as Freddie Flintoff and engage in long, soul-destroying rehabilitation programmes that are ultimately unsuccessful. Slowly come to accept that your days as an international cricketer are behind you, even though you’re only 32.

“Now features Crying Into Your Puma Pillowcase While Having An Existential Crisis mini game.”

You can order it in advance and still have time to waterproof your Nintendo DS so that your salty tears of sympathy don’t knacker it up for when you want to play Club Penguin.

Tags: Andrew Flintoff, Cricket computer games | reviews, previews and downloads | PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, Wii // 1 Appeal »

Poor Salman Butt. That’s all we can think about.

He’s trying to organise a nice tea party, even though the crockery’s jagged and serrated and keeps cutting people’s hands. The teapot’s got a hole in it and it’s dribbling boiling water over everyone.

Yet Butt’s holding it all together. He’s making do, even though every time he offers someone sugar, it’s fraught with danger. There’s blood everywhere, but no-one’s died. It’s fragile, but they’re getting by.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, someone drops a live grenade onto the table and tells him to use it as a saucer.

Tags: Mohammad Yousuf, Salman Butt // 8 Appeals »

The 2010 version of International Cricket Captain is out. It’s a good game, but pretty similar to the 2009 version really. Our ICC 2009 review should tell you everything you need to know if you’ve never played the game before.

Other than that, we want to voice a gripe. To be clear, this is borne of playing this game for many, many hours, so it’s not a diss. Our gripe is with the micromanagement.

It feels a bit like two different games. There’s the side of it where you’re signing and training the players, managing the club and selecting the team. Then there’s the side of the game where you’re telling the bowlers where to bowl and setting the field.

We like the first part. We don’t like telling Steven Finn to bowl short and straight for two different batsmen every single time he comes on to bowl. It gets boring. Nor can we bothered changing the field by the time we get to 2015 – but we STILL want to see whether our young fast-bowling all-rounder is going to turn into Garry Sobers or not and we endure endless matches, going through the motions with our match orders in order to find out.

Is this a review? Not really, but we feel a bit better now.

Buy ICC 2010 here or download the free two-day trial.

Tags: Cricket computer games | reviews, previews and downloads | PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, Wii // 3 Appeals »

We’ve heard some odd things during this Test match, all of which revolve around the fact that the Duke cricket ball swings more than the Kookaburra used in Australia. Apparently This year’s Dukes swing more than the ones used last year as well.

The implication is that James Anderson’s blistering swing bowling is somehow irrelavant or worthless.

What?

This is entirely missing the point. The point is that James Anderson took 6-17 in a Test match after taking 5-54 in the first innings. That is a thing in its own right. That is a monumental thing and it was entertainment of the highest order as well.

We’ve got a light, hoppy, summer beer in front of us right now. It’s great. We’re not sitting here worrying whether there’ll be a malty, dark winter ale on sale in Bargain Booze in November.

Tags: James Anderson // 10 Appeals »