3 minute readA semi-regular feature in which we ask a fella going by the name of Prince Prefab about cricket – even though he hates cricket. We are in bold. Prince Prefab is not. King Cricket: We’re speaking now on the eve of the County Championship and I am all the way
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.
Who will initially be named as a County Championship title contender but actually end up getting relegated?
2 minute readThe first week of the County Championship is a great time for predictions. We’ve gone through a whole bunch of previews to pick out the three teams who have most often been mentioned as favourites this year and we’re now going to try and predict which of those favourites will
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Does the IPL deserve its reputation?
12 minute readThe 2019 IPL is getting underway. It is the 12th edition. Last year we took a look at whether the IPL deserved it reputation. This is that article. Back in 2008 the IPL was a bombastic upstart that threw huge sums of money at all the big name players. Now
Continue readingEngland need a short-pitched specialist like Neil Wagner
< 1 minute readAsking someone to bowl with the old ball is not the same as picking someone who has built their career around bowling with the old ball. Asking someone to bowl short is not the same as picking someone who has built their entire career around bowling short. Being tall does
Continue readingExactly how bad was Australia’s tour of South Africa?
5 minute readMost Test tours are bad tours these days because it is rare for any team to win away from home. That said, there are different degrees of badness. We have a faint suspicion that Australia’s recently-completed tour of South Africa might have been unusually bad. Let’s try and work out
Continue readingThe fourth innings ‘ball hundred’
< 1 minute readRuns are not always the objective for a batsman. If a team finds itself behind in a game such that a win becomes almost impossible, the objective generally becomes survival. Similarly, if you’re one-nil up in a series and it’s the final Test, a draw means a series win. In
Continue readingIs Stuart Broad back and is that necessarily a wholly good thing for England?
4 minute readThe future’s here. The future’s even more of Stuart Broad bowling with the new ball. You might think that sounds suspiciously like the past and you’d be right. Sometimes things don’t change all that much. Actually one thing’s changed. Whether it’s enthusiasm, rhythm, a minor technical tweak or a combination
Continue readingWhy did Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft think that cheating using sandpaper was worse than doing the exact same cheating using something that wasn’t technically sandpaper?
3 minute readWhen we first saw Cameron Bancroft tampering with the ball using sandpaper, we thought to ourself: “That is sandpaper” – and so did everyone else. We were therefore very much surprised when he later claimed that it was not in fact sandpaper but something akin to home-made sandpaper. “We had
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Has David Warner really ‘gone rogue’ and if so, why? Let’s examine the evidence
4 minute readAbsolutely the best recent headline about Australia’s ball tampering is the one on Fox Sports suggesting that David Warner has ‘gone rogue’. The evidence for David Warner’s rogue-going is that (a) he was sitting on his own at one point and (b) he drank Champagne with friends who weren’t cricketers.
Continue readingAustralia have been caught ball-tampering. But what was the worst aspect? And what was the funniest?
4 minute readWell this is very much hilarious but also reprehensible because saying the second bit is part of the unwritten contract we have all entered into as cricket fans. Australia have been caught ball-tampering, a simple statement that doesn’t really do justice to all that’s happened and how people have reacted
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