King Cricket

February 20, 2016 Australia / New Zealand

Brendon McCullum remains very much himself

2 minute readBelieve it or not, batting with positive intent isn’t actually a new invention. In the hundred-and-odd years of Test cricket, people did actually try it from time to time before now. Mostly they got out. New Zealand were heavily beaten in the first Test against Australia and when Brendon McCullum

February 19, 2016 Extras

We wrote about what some other people wrote on Twitter

< 1 minute readIt’s a harder task than you might imagine. The spoils of our long hours of trawling are over at Cricinfo. Nando’s Watch is back by popular request and there’s also a bit about Danny Morrison. We love Danny Morrison and his unrelated-bullet-points style of communication. It’s good to see he’s

February 17, 2016 Regulars

A cat struggling to be indifferent to cricket

< 1 minute readMarissa writes: I can offer no explanation as to why Moggy is even trying to pretend she’s not watching the match, seeing as she’s a staunch England fan (named after Eoin Morgs). During the match she frequently yelled at Bairstow “I can’t believe he’s not Buttler!” And yes, she uses

February 16, 2016 India

Do the Rising Pune Supergiants have the finest name in the history of sport?

< 1 minute readThe answer is yes. “Supergiants” beats “Super Kings” on account of it being one word. A ‘super giant’ would simply be a giant who was very, very good, whereas a ‘Supergiant’ is a massive dude with extraordinary strength and x-ray vision who can also fly. The fact that they are

February 14, 2016 England / South Africa

Alex Hales cultivates a healthy aversion to failure

2 minute readIf you were starring in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and needed to act in a scene where the submarine grounded on the seabed or was attacked by some sort of leviathan, there was only one way to do it. You and the rest of the cast ran

February 12, 2016 England / South Africa

England win, England lose, life goes on

< 1 minute readSometimes you win, sometimes you lose. When you win, all’s well. The captain says that you played well as a unit while adding a cautionary note: “We are not yet the finished article.” When you lose, he talks about processes and learning curves. Lose a few in a row and

February 11, 2016 Australia / West Indies

Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s take on specific training

< 1 minute readDavid Warner said that back in 2012, he saw Shivnarine Chanderpaul put in a six-hour shift against the bowling machine. “I said ‘This is ridiculous, how can you do this?’ and he said: ‘If you’re going to bat for six hours in a game you might as well practise it.’”

February 10, 2016 England

Will Liam Dawson play for England at the World Twenty20?

< 1 minute readHe’s in the squad. The squad’s not that big. He probably will. Australia may well be going down the same route, but it still seems weird to us to select players for a World Cup when you’ve never selected them before. We were so taken aback by Liam Dawson’s inclusion

February 9, 2016 England / South Africa

Hashim Amla in ODIs – a brief but unwelcome detour into stats

2 minute readThe human brain isn’t wired for statistics. In fact it isn’t wired at all. Perhaps that’s the problem. Maybe in the distant future when we’re all mechanically enhanced cyberfolk we’ll be able to make logical decisions based on data rather than being influenced by our demented emotional responses to stories

February 9, 2016 Australia

Better wicketkeeping is one of the components rattling around in Australia’s World Cup bag o’ bits

< 1 minute readAustralia have gone a bit England with their T20 World Cup preparations. Their long-term planning has climaxed with a 15-man squad where a third of the players haven’t even played a T20 international. Impressive stuff. They’re clearly of a mind that having the right components is of more importance than