2 minute readEdwardian writes: I arrived at Fenner’s just after start of play and exchanged a ‘hello’ with an Arab in a floppy hat on the boundary. I had to bone up on Arabs before the match. The team are a wandering outfit started by E.W. (Jim) Swanton back in the frozen
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.
Tigger being conspicuously indifferent to Toby Roland-Jones
< 1 minute readMike writes: Try as I might, I was unable to get Tigger to show the slightest interest in To-Ro-Jo’s debut destruction of the Saffer top order – in fact she positioned herself as far away as possible from the action, atop a throne of recently used but as-yet-unputaway guest bedding.
Continue readingSo the County Championship’s over then
2 minute readHonestly, you take the trouble to inform people how things stand in the County Championship and the damn thing only goes and gets itself decided five minutes later. Essex won their match by an innings and let’s not bother getting too mathematical about what Lancashire would need to do to
Continue readingWhat in the name of all that is good and pure is going on in the County Championship?
2 minute readNice bit of SEO there. Anyone searching “what in the name of all that is good and pure is going on in the County Championship” is now highly likely to end up on this page. In your face, Google algorithm. [Watches the ad revenue roll in.] Yes, it’s the time
Continue readingHalf a dozen cricket balls in an unusual place
< 1 minute readThis is how you do home décor people. Marking the other strand of our other writing life, our bike is also in the kitchen. In contrast to the cricket balls, its decorative worth is still the matter of some debate. Send your pictures of cricket bats and other cricket stuff
Continue readingStuart Broad’s batting has peaked
2 minute readStuart Broad’s batting just gets better and better. Maybe not by the traditional metric of batting average, but there are far more sensible ways of assessing a cricketer’s worth. Once upon a time, Broad was a good batsman: high left elbow, great timing and solid defence. Then he top-edged a
Continue reading“You don’t see Alastair Cook drop too many”
2 minute readSo said Michael Vaughan after Cook had shelled an easy one early on. Where has he been looking? We’ve always felt like he drops a fair few – although maybe not by Vaughan’s own almost criminally low catching standards. We wouldn’t go so far as to say that Cook’s a
Continue readingHaseeb Hameed might carry his bat
< 1 minute readEngland are still very much in the market for a Test opener, you feel. Mark Stoneman is making a fist of things, but they’d quite like another top order batsman or two to take to Australia. At the time of writing, Lancashire are four wickets down but Haseeb Hameed is
Continue readingWith the Ashes decided, England and Australia will look to determine which has the better ODI second XI
< 1 minute readEngland and Australia fans who enjoy answering the question “so why isn’t this the Ashes then?” will be delighted to hear that the two sides are going to do that thing where they follow the Test series with five don’t-give-a-toss one-day matches six months later in the other country. The
Continue reading2017 Twenty20 Finals Day – most of the story in scorecards
< 1 minute readWe rather love Twenty20 finals day, which has always seemed to strike a good balance between elite sport and village fete. A lot of short format competitions seem to be striving for the po-faced tribalism of football, but the annual climax of the original has always erred on the side
Continue reading