< 1 minute readThis latest England team is a stumpy. It’s not completely without tail – there’s an Anderson-shaped nub there – but there really isn’t much. Presumably, should he return, Ben Stokes would replace Liam Plunkett, which would only strengthen the main spine further. Lower order batsmen rarely contribute on tougher days
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England’s batting’s completely fixed and everything’s absolutely fine again
< 1 minute readLet’s just go with that, eh? Let’s just go with ‘everything’s rosy’. They’ve even addressed our concern that Gary Ballance bats too low for Yorkshire by making him go in first drop for England. Speaking of the batting order, Joe Root clearly benefited from getting one innings in a row
Continue readingEngland’s reactive batting
< 1 minute readTwice last May, we wrote about England’s overwhelmingly reactive batting approach. First we described Kevin Pietersen as being England’s only proactive top order batsman; the only one prone to trying to set the field while at the crease. A week later, Pietersen wasn’t playing and Jonny Bairstow took on the
Continue readingEngland will play a fairly fast bowler
2 minute readWe all knew that Sam Robson was going to get picked. He’ll play sensibly and probably quite well. If so, we’ll be quite happy about that while simultaneously wishing that we didn’t have to endure hilarious Australian ‘banter’ about his place of birth every time he gets a half-decent score.
Continue readingThe opposition are allowed to play well
< 1 minute readIs anyone else starting to find this kind of thing grating? “Sometimes you just have to put your hands up and say the opposition were better than us with the bat.” So said Alastair Cook after the fourth one-day international. There’s been an awful lot of ‘accepting that the opposition
Continue readingOne of you must have seen this match
< 1 minute readOr listened to it. Or paid a bit more attention to the scorecard than we did. In which case, please could you leave some sort of pithy synopsis in the comments section so that everyone else can feel like they got something of value out of visiting this website today?
Continue readingWe wrote about Paul Collingwood
< 1 minute readNo, like, we REALLY wrote about Paul Collingwood this time. It’s like a proper article for a proper website. You may have read it a couple of days ago, of course. If you did, we apologise, because this is all you’re getting here on King Cricket today. But why not
Continue readingDidn’t see this one either
< 1 minute readWhich is a shame, because it looked rather fun. You may have noticed that some of our updates have been a little half-arsed cursory of late. However, you don’t get to be King Cricket without coming up with some really rather ingenious ways round being completely uninformed about things. Fortunately
Continue readingWe didn’t see any of today’s match
< 1 minute readNot one minute of it. We logged onto the internet this evening, saw a headline about it, thought: “Ooh, that sounds juicy,” and then went and looked up the scorecard. Top stuff. Top, top stuff. Well played, England. We take it this is still the transitional period then? Not quite
Continue readingThe unpredictable flames of England’s one-day batting
< 1 minute readIt’s funny how things change. Time was, England’s one-day batting started with a bang/Banger and then burnt out. Nowadays they light tinder, wait patiently while the kindling gently crackles and then chuck on some logs which have spent eight months marinating in petrol right at the end. The first scenario
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