< 1 minute readThe headline promises something of a barrel-dwelling fish shooting exercise, but hopefully it’s more than that. It’s not so much ‘T20 commentators talk utter rot‘ as ‘some T20 commentators are occasionally slow to pick up on tactical trends and they therefore assess match situations according to outdated notions of how
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.
England hire a Maxonian
< 1 minute readIs it a good idea for a team that can’t bat to hire the coach of a team that can’t bat? It’s probably okay. The England coach is basically just a management figure, after all and Peter Moores seems pretty good at that side of things. He brought in many
Continue readingBen Stokes and the cure-all that is ‘passion’
< 1 minute readOne worrying, but entirely predictable, revelation from Ben Stokes’ recent interview in the Guardian is that he’s broken bones punching inanimate objects before. He reckons he’s going to learn this time. “I don’t think punching lockers is the way forward for anyone. There’s only going to be one winner there.”
Continue readingIndia v Australia, 2004 Mumbai Test – match report
2 minute readRaaj writes: I didn’t even want a mobile phone but, after conceding that my post-Uni employability depended upon being contactable, I caved in and took on my schoolboy cousin’s chunky, silver Ericsson when he upgraded. It worked; I got a job and earned enough money to fly to Bombay to
Continue readingThe numerous tabs of county cricket
2 minute readWe missed a trick when naming our county players to watch. Instead of trying to keep things manageable by limiting ourself to five, we should have completely changed the rules and just named all the England squad contenders who we were watching anyway. What happens now is we open all
Continue readingKing Cricket’s 2014 county players to watch
2 minute readThat’s ‘players to watch in 2014’. We don’t have 2,014 players to keep an eye on. In fact, we’ve got fewer than ever before – just five. A reminder of the qualification criteria: Qualified to play for England No established internationals Youngish Playing in the first division of the County
Continue readingEngland Squad Watch – part three
< 1 minute readThe fight for England spots continues to a soundtrack of very gentle applause from a smattering of supporters who didn’t happen to have much on that day (activity-wise). Top order Jonathan Trott made 37 against Sussex – although to be fair, that has been the second-highest score in two completed
Continue readingEngland Squad Watch – part two
< 1 minute readEveryone knows that the key to a strong international side is ‘competition for places’. It absolutely isn’t the case that ‘competition for places’ is really just a synonym for ‘the first XI’s turned crap’. Yesterday’s England Squad Watch ended rather bleakly with the specialist batsmen seemingly competing only for a
Continue readingEngland Squad Watch – part one
2 minute readWho plays for England these days? NO-ONE KNOWS. They don’t even have a coach and the uncertainty pours down from there, covering everyone in a sticky, unctuous goo that at first you think might be some sort of over-ripe berry that’s fallen from a tree, before realising that there’s no
Continue readingOf new eras and transitional periods
< 1 minute readWe wrote for someone else. Since we stopped writing for The Cricketer’s website a few years back, we haven’t really had an outlet for non-satirical longer articles, so we reckon that’s what we’ll do for Cricket365 and we’ll link to anything that goes up there. This first piece is about
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