2 minute readEngland have named their Test squad for the tour of Sri Lanka. Rory Burns is in, Olly Stone is in, and – a mere 10 years after we tipped him – so too is Joe “No Pants” Denly. The Burns selection isn’t really worth commenting on, so let’s concentrate on
Continue readingAuthor: King Cricket
Otherwise known as Alex Bowden, a lapsed cricket journalist who has written for ESPNCricinfo, wisden.com, Cricket 365, The Cricketer and plenty of other places.
Links to some non-cricket writing and a bit more background here.
A review of Afghanistan career mode in Cricket Captain 2018
3 minute readBack when we reviewed Cricket Captain 2018’s ‘All-Time Greats’ mode, we said we’d also do a thing on playing a career as Afghanistan. This is that thing. For a more comprehensive look at the mechanics of Cricket Captain 2018, see our review of the 2017 game (it’s fundamentally the same).
Continue readingKedar Jadhav once dobbed three wickets against Pakistan
< 1 minute readOne of the great things about cricket is that a match can be unimaginably massive and yet one of the key contributions will come from someone who doesn’t even practise. Kedar Jadhav doesn’t really bowl in the nets. He’s probably worried that any attempt to hone his craft will wash
Continue readingWhy is cricket so infatuated with the Powerplay?
2 minute readOne of the more mundane revelations from the recently undertaken trials of The Hundred is that they’re going to have a Powerplay. ‘So what?’ you might think. But when all innovations seem to be on the table and the aim is to make the game as simple and straightforward as
Continue readingMorkel Burns Pope (and now for some commas)
2 minute readSurrey have won the County Championship. You win 10 of 12 matches and draw the other two and these things happen. We were checking the averages in the first division of the County Championship earlier today and two things struck us. Firstly, very few people have averaged over 40 and
Continue readingYou can probably gauge the worth of Paul Collingwood from that time he was an umpire
2 minute readPaul Collingwood excelled at all those aspects of cricket which are undervalued; all the ones that are hard to measure; stuff like fielding and unearthing singles that have no right to be taken. Because of this, he was one of our heroes when he retired from international cricket and he’s
Continue readingIt might not be entirely fair to judge Adil Rashid on his ability to unfailingly produce magic on demand
2 minute readEngland got to have a go at partnership-breaking when the ball wasn’t doing a right lot today. Everyone had a go and everyone failed and then Joe Root finally gave Adil Rashid a bowl and he got both lads out. That’s a very simplistic way to describe how things went,
Continue readingLet’s strap on Alastair Cook’s pads for a minute so that we can appreciate his streamlined thinking
2 minute readAfter precisely one Test match, we’d seen all the shots (and non-shots) we were ever going to see from Alastair Cook. You know them all, but let’s list them anyway. Maybe in 20 years time you’ll revisit this article having forgotten one of them. The leave The forward defensive The
Continue readingRavindra Jadeja is pretty annoying which almost certainly means he’s good at cricket
2 minute readThere are two main reasons why cricketers are annoying. (1) They play for your team and they aren’t very good. (2) They play for the opposition and they are very good. The first is self-evident. The second is rather more nuanced and deserves a little bit of elaboration. So let’s
Continue readingA near-streak match report from Lord’s from when England played India
2 minute readEdwardian writes: I had stayed in London the night before, so got to Lord’s early. I was frisked by a security chap who was pouring with sweat. “Blimey, mate,” I said. “You’ve been on it.” He replied: “It’s the menopause” – a line I suspect he was using liberally. After
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