< 1 minute read Yes, Bangladesh lost again, but Shakib al Hasan had an all-round good game and that warrants coverage. He took 2-50 as Pakistan pummelled their way to 308 and then he hit 75 off 73 balls. Shakib now averages 32 with the bat in one-day internationals and 33 with the ball.
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.
Opening the bowling with a spinner
< 1 minute read India is the home of spin bowling, so we always want to see EXTREME TRIAL BY SPIN whenever there’s a Test over there. There’s some batsman who’s supposed to be good against spin bowling. Yeah? How will he fare in an EXTREME TRIAL BY SPIN? Harbhajan Singh opened the bowling
Continue readingThe eleventh most influential sports blog in Britain
< 1 minute read That’s us. Apart from the top ten, we’re first! We were going to change the title of the site to ‘King Cricket – eleventh most influential sports blog in Britain’, but what if we go up a place or so? When do you cross the line from self-deprecating joke to
Continue readingEngland’s Twenty20 World Cup venues
< 1 minute read Lord’s and The Oval were the first two confirmed venues for the Twenty20 World Cup in 2009. With two London grounds being used, it gives everyone in the capital the best possible chance of seeing a match. If they’d have only had the one venue inside the M25, it would
Continue readingOwais Shah is a class above
< 1 minute read Okay, so maybe he is really irritating if you have to share a dressing room with him. We don’t know. We don’t care. He’s a fantastically accomplished batsman. In the Sussex v MCC – and you have to call it this – ‘county cricket curtain raiser’, 17 batsmen have now
Continue readingShivnarine Chanderpaul hits a last ball six to win
< 1 minute read This was the perfect example of how great batsmen play the situation. Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s an obdurate Test batsman. He hangs around for hours. In one-day cricket, he’s a different beast. He’s A BEAST OF WRATH. Controlled wrath, but wrath nonetheless. The West Indies needed ten to win off the last
Continue readingBlog of the month
< 1 minute read We’re blog of the month at Simply Cricket. This comes hot on the heels of being The Wisden Cricketer’s Best Of Blogs for April. We haven’t had so much recognition since we were in India and everyone thought we were Nasser Hussain. This recent recognition is hopefully more justified, if
Continue readingRob Key suffers interminable torment at the hands of England’s selectors and coaches
< 1 minute read “I don’t expect tea and cakes with England selectors and coaches.” So don’t go round to their houses. Come to ours instead. We’ll look after you. We’ve got four different sorts of tea and we’ll make sure we get an even greater array of cakes in especially. We don’t really
Continue readingWill Jefferson, Nottinghamshire
< 1 minute read A lot of our better updates have been about Will Jefferson. This is partly why we’re watching him for the third season in a row. We’re mainly watching him like a child with no concept of what’s socially acceptable though; with our mouth agape, pointing and saying ‘why has that
Continue readingA generic ‘Bangladesh lose’ update
< 1 minute read The opposition’s best batsman, Mohammad Yousuf, scored a hundred. Shahid Afridi hit 27 off 11 balls. Bangladesh’s top scorer was their number ten, Mashrafe Mortaza. Shakib al Hasan was out first ball. There are four more of these fixtures. How are we going to get through them? Does anybody know
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