King Cricket

June 20, 2016 England / Sri Lanka

England are eight up with 12 points still available

< 1 minute readIs that the score in the Super Series? Cricinfo helpfully – and somewhat surprisingly – provides a points table for Sri Lanka’s current tour, but you then have to check the fixture list and guess at each match’s value to work out what’s still to come. We’ve said that a

June 16, 2016 England

Following the protagonist through the formats – players and audience in the T20 era

2 minute readWe had an interesting (to us) chat to Charles Dagnall of Test Match Special (TMS) via Twitter yesterday. At one point he said something closely related to a number of our recurrent themes/hobby horses on this site and we were faintly annoyed with ourself for not having put the thought

June 15, 2016 England

How many players choose to become a one-format specialist?

2 minute readStuart Broad wants to state his case for inclusion in England’s one-day side. Unfortunately for him, this is difficult as he doesn’t actually play one-day cricket. According to Ali Martin, Broad’s played one 50-over game for Nottinghamshire in the last 18 months. The opposite applies to Jos Buttler, who is

June 13, 2016 England

Alex Hales’ disappointed face after being dismissed

< 1 minute readYesterday Alastair Cook played far and away the most entertaining reverse sweeps and ramp shots we’ve ever seen. Proof, if it were needed, that context is everything. With 10,000 runs of back story, this was a proper plot twist. In contrast, Alex Hales’ daddy fifties are a new story. This

June 10, 2016 Match report

England v Sri Lanka at Lord’s, day one – match report

4 minute readWe weren’t going to do this, but when we started writing something else we sort of felt obliged to ‘fess up that we’d actually been at the ground yesterday and by that point a match report seemed unavoidable. New rule We always include a brief italicised outline of what we

June 8, 2016 England / Sri Lanka

It’s the Lord’s Test – you know what that means, right?

< 1 minute readIt means it’s time for great swathes of flowery sentimental guff about what is, at the end of the day, a load of grass surrounded by plastic seats, overlooked by blocks of flats. The only way we can get through the misty-eyed paeans to Lord’s these days is to turn

June 7, 2016 County cricket / South Africa

Is Rory Kleinveldt the archetypal South African pro?

< 1 minute readAs you may well have seen, Michael Lumb and Riki Wessels shared a 342-run partnership in a one-day game last night. Even more dispiritingly for the opposition, they did it as openers while batting first. You could easily have been forgiven for thinking that the game was essentially over even

June 5, 2016 Match report

England v Australia at Edgbaston Test – day one match report

2 minute readIvan Meagreheart The Smart Phone writes: It’s hard work being Ged Ladd’s smartphone. I get pretty run down by the end of most days. Still, there are perks. One of those perks is cricket. During the cricket season I get to look at the scores a heck of a lot.

June 2, 2016 England

Weather to play cricket – talking points from Colin Graves’ recent interviews

2 minute readMeant to do this the other day. Midway through the first Test, England and Wales Cricket Board chairman Colin Graves smooshed around all of the various media present, saying the same things to different people. The two main things that he said were that the T20 Blast is “mediocre” and

June 1, 2016 County cricket

Hampshire’s innovative approach to losing ground on rivals

2 minute readUninformative lead-in paragraph. Brace yourselves. Uninspiring but undeniably informative subheading to come. Middlesex v Hampshire This was our favourite match this week, largely because Hampshire scored -1 points. They did actually score a point for taking three wickets in Middlesex’s first innings of 467 but were deducted two for bowling