< 1 minute readIt never goes well. Matthew Hayden is very poor at executing his talking skills. Thanks to RC for pointing us towards Hayden’s latest attempt in an interview with Cricinfo. Here are some highlights: “I go to the middle, I mark the crease and I squat on the wicket. I feel
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.
Jacob Oram and his face
< 1 minute readMost teams struggle for all-rounders. In New Zealand they’re ten a penny. If only they could find a couple more half-decent specialist batsmen, they’d be a force to be reckoned with. This new batting line-up’s missing a few of the bigger names, of course, but even those batting absentees dabbled
Continue reading
Bad light stopped play
< 1 minute readIt’s not often we agree with Mark Nicholas, if only because we don’t float through life spouting words like ‘divine’ and ‘exquisite’ every second sentence, but we think he had a point this one time he was commentating over Channel 5 highlights of cricketers walking on and off the field.
Continue readingBrendon McCullum uses his feet
2 minute readBrendon McCullum recently found his feet. Now he’s putting them to good use. If you’ve read the page we just linked to, this might sound kind of familiar. This is the Test version of that post. Brendon McCullum’s had 52 Test innings. In his first 45, he managed two hundreds
Continue readingEngland’s brilliant white kit
< 1 minute readA lot of people are asking whether England’s new Test kit is the whitest ever seen on a cricket field. It isn’t. That honour goes to the outfit worn by Algernon Denby-Farthing in a match for Yorkshire against Kent in 1885. Denby-Farthing was obsessive about the cleanliness of his whites,
Continue readingCricket lunch
< 1 minute readWe pretty much know the teams. We pretty much know the tactics. What we don’t know is what the two teams will be feasting on during the first lunch break and who will fare the better. It’s common cricketing courtesy to clap the players when they emerge for the afternoon
Continue readingEssex v Middlesex County Championship match report
2 minute readMatch reports are still welcome. Keep them fairly short and remember, don’t mention the actual cricket. 668, Neighbour of the Beast writes: With weather set on sunny we set off for Essex with the hope of catching up with a few sub-Saharan migrants, chirping and exhibiting the usual seasonal territoriality.
Continue readingChennai Super Kings – what is a Super King?
< 1 minute readYes, it’s just what you think. As it says on the Chennai Super Kings website: “[Super] enhances the qualities of the word it is prefixed to. Super Kings then is not just about royalty, but about absolute monarchy.” So there you go. Absolute monarchy. That’s what it’s all about. A
Continue readingSimon Jones and his injuries
2 minute readAndrew Flintoff is injured again. If only there were another English fast-bowling hope we could all idiotically and unreasonably crush with our mindless, unjustified hope. Step forward Simon Jones. Step forward carefully though. Don’t want you twisting an ankle or rupturing your pancreas or something. Simon Jones took 5-32 yesterday
Continue readingMatthew Hoggard hatches fiendish plot to get back into the England team
< 1 minute readHe’s going to distract one of the Test team while they’re driving, causing them to have a car accident. “I need to keep knocking on the door because they’re in the driving seat at the moment.” We never thought he’d stoop so low.
Continue reading