King Cricket

Mop-up of the day – runs down south

2 minute readAfter day-night Tests, the latest innovation in the ongoing Australia v New Zealand Test series has been additional opponents. Sri Lanka and the West Indies have been drafted in to keep things fresh, but they couldn’t tip the balance. Australia still had marginally the better day. New Zealand would have

December 9, 2015 Cricket products

A Nightwatchman for Christmas?

< 1 minute readSend him in. Let him weather the marketing and do all the preparations and cooking. Then you can just swan in on Boxing Day to eat leftovers and get drunk. No, this is Nightwatchman with an upper-case N. The Wisden cricket quarterly is doing gift packages. If you don’t know

December 8, 2015 India

ICC World T20 preparations exactly on track – grounds and fixtures to follow

< 1 minute readComing to somewhere in India at some point in March, it’s ICC World Twenty20 India 2016! If you think that sounds like an almost random selection of words, abbreviations, places and numbers, think again. The Twenty20 World Cup is HAPPENING. Look, they’ve even finished the logo. They’re not quite sure

December 6, 2015 India / South Africa

Hashim Amla practises his forward defensive

< 1 minute readFacing his 46th delivery, Hashim Amla inside-edged the ball past his stumps and into space. Trawling through his memory banks, he happened upon the correct course of action and moved his body up to the other end. With the ball still enjoying a rare moment of liberation, he then jogged

December 4, 2015 India / South Africa

South Africa batsmen defy both expectations and the Delhi pitch

< 1 minute readThere were many who felt that presented with a flatter pitch, South Africa might actually make a few runs during this Test series against India. In Delhi, they have been presented with precisely such a thing. However, these Saffers are made of stern stuff. They refused to bow to expectation

December 3, 2015 South Africa

Kyle Abbott, ones and zeros

< 1 minute readAs the old joke goes, there are only 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don’t. It’s not the best binary code joke in that it’s an actual joke and makes actual sense. We much prefer it when the punchline’s the bit in

December 2, 2015 Cricket books | reviews and recommendations / Regulars

Cricket books for Boxing Day Test Eve

3 minute readWe know that many of you like to pass the time on Boxing Day Test Eve by giving people presents. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the better cricket-themed books on offer this year. These are just some of the newer ones. Take a look at the book review

December 1, 2015 England / Pakistan

When is an omission a rotation and when is it a good old-fashioned drop?

2 minute readThere’s a subtlety to England’s current approach to one-day cricket which may have passed some by. It’s not about ball-wallopery or -whangery, it’s to do with that other key aspect of international cricket – man management. Everyone’s agreed that one of the keys to one-day success is a no-blame culture

November 30, 2015 Australia / New Zealand

Day-night cricket and the fire in the bin

< 1 minute readAs a rule, if people aren’t moaning about the thing you feared they’d moan about and are instead moaning about something completely different, you’ve succeeded. The elimination of moaning is of course not a possibility. It’s like a pocket of air under wallpaper. The best you can do is displace

November 27, 2015 Australia / New Zealand

Night-day cricket should be the next innovation

< 1 minute readThose watching the first day of the inaugural day-night Test between Australia and New Zealand will have been sorely disappointed. We were promised slapstick and catastrophe, but got neither. If you asked us to describe it, we’d say it looked very much like Test cricket, only with a pink ball.