King Cricket

October 24, 2015 England / Pakistan

England’s batsmen roll onto thorny hedge cuttings

< 1 minute readGood bowling exacerbates uncertainty. This is a very inexperienced England batting line-up and it therefore has good cause for self-doubt – particularly in unfamiliar conditions. When confronted with the contrasting threats of Wahab Riaz and Yasir Shah, it was no surprise that it collapsed in on itself like a cheap

October 23, 2015 England

Joe Root’s back

< 1 minute readNot as in ‘returned’ because he hasn’t been away. We’re more worried that he might have ankylosing spondylitis. If Alastair Cook doesn’t get the runs, Joe Root will, and if Joe Root doesn’t get them, then England fans better hope that the team can cobble together a good number of

October 22, 2015 Pakistan

Misbah-ul-Haq untroubled by Venn diagrams

< 1 minute readIf Bryce McGain to Ashwell Prince and Dale Steyn to Paul Collingwood made the beast with four backs, their progeny would be Misbah-ul-Haq against England in Dubai. Misbah is a man of extremes, as capable of batting for a draw when there isn’t one on offer as he is of

October 21, 2015 England

England unclear on whether or not Ben Stokes has been suffering ‘the wild shits’

< 1 minute readYou’d think with all their well-paid medical staff they’d be able to distinguish between the wild shits and the common-or-garden variety, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. Alastair Cook said: “He’s had a 24-hour bug, he didn’t look very well yesterday apparently but he’s here now and we’ll

October 20, 2015 India

Virender Sehwag: a magnificent bastard who regularly induced pant-smearage in bowlers

< 1 minute readVirender Sehwag retired from a fairly broad range of formats today. It’s about as close as you ever get to a proper retirement in this day and age when the Ghosts of Legends Past can regularly be seen haunting cricket grounds throughout the world. We have pretty much no time

October 19, 2015 Pakistan

Shoaib Malik belatedly begins to explain the seemingly inexplicable

< 1 minute readShoaib Malik’s always been hugely popular with a certain segment of Pakistan fans and we’ve never remotely understood why. He’s always seemed so nondescript. He’s long had some sort of PR machine behind him which, as well as skewing our perception of his popularity a touch, may have won over

October 17, 2015 England / Pakistan

Adil Rashid conveys the crumble

2 minute readAs you’re all no doubt aware, pretty much all DIY tasks can be embarked upon using only a dessert spoon and a hammer. They’re adaptable devices and allow you to make a start, but after a bit you may well yearn for more specialist tools which would enable you complete

October 16, 2015 England

Alastair Cook is a complete part-timer

< 1 minute readEpic, they say. Monumental. Alastair Cook batted for 836 minutes against Pakistan. That’s almost 14 hours. Or, in other words, not even two days’ work for a normal person. So before we start lauding Cook’s extraordinary powers of concentration, let’s just stop a minute and ponder whether he could spend

October 15, 2015 England

Alastair Cook does the big shop

< 1 minute readAfter sizing up the bowling and briefly treating himself to a strange and hugely entertaining ‘mustn’t handle the ball’ dance, Alastair Cook quickly moved up through the gears. At times he got as high as third. Mostly he sat in second. When there was a break in play, he refuelled,

October 14, 2015 England / Pakistan

How costly will that dropped chance prove to be? Apparently only fate can decide

< 1 minute readLast year, Pakistan managed first innings scores in Abu Dhabi of 570-6 and 566-3 against Australia and then New Zealand. It’s not like England did especially badly in conceding 523-8. Pakistan are just good. Not that it’s impossible to take wickets there though. Those two teams’ responses were 261 and