King Cricket

July 18, 2015 Australia / England

Pitch flatter than Snowdonia, more uneven than billiard table

< 1 minute readYou may have noticed that we didn’t complain about the pitch after day one. That’s something we only allow ourself to do once both teams have batted. Sadly, this policy appears to have been vindicated. Sometimes it’s not a dead pitch. Sometimes it’s merely in a deep, deep sleep and

July 16, 2015 Australia / England

Chris Rogers in the 21st Century

< 1 minute readThere is a famous oak tree in the middle of a field near Bakewell in Derbyshire. It is weathered and gnarled and its enormous branches reach halfway to the road. Some say it is lucky. Some say it is cursed. The only thing that is known about it for certain

July 15, 2015 England

Lord’s – why ‘The Home of Cricket’ pisses some of us off

< 1 minute readIt’s the Lord’s Test. Mark Nicholas is rheumy-eyed already, prepping a few oleaginous soundbites ahead of Channel 5’s highlights show. However, for many of us it’s just another Test match – albeit one that brings more than its fair share of aggrandising waffle. We’re the first to admit that we

July 14, 2015 Australia / England

England and Australia have too many very good batsmen

< 1 minute readMaybe this statement would seem more accurate to some of you if we said ‘too many fair batsmen’ – but that would fly in the face of the universally-accepted Premier Manager 2 scale where ‘fair’ actually means ‘really rather shit’. No, England and Australia have too many Very Good batsmen.

July 13, 2015 Australia / England

Will Australia cobble together a new side?

2 minute readOne of Darren Lehmann’s strengths as a coach is his pragmatism. When he first took over, he assessed the various players available to him and concluded that he was going to have to make do with a few who were less than ideal. David Warner was a tool, but he

July 11, 2015 Australia / England

Shane Watson’s front leg

2 minute readYou’re surely already aware of this, but Shane Watson’s front leg has many magical powers. It emits a peculiar kind of leather-specific magnetism that draws cricket balls towards it and it also clouds the mind of its owner, persuading him that nothing that collides with it could ever have gone

July 10, 2015 Australia / England

What Mark Wood might be

< 1 minute readOther than a fast bowler, feisty lower order batsman and a medieval knight of the outfield. These are, of course, major reasons why Mark Wood is currently our favourite cricketer, but it’s not just that. He’s also unfamiliar, so there’s a wonderful uncertainty about what he might yet be. It’s

July 9, 2015 Australia / England

Moeen Ali likes to feel bat on ball

< 1 minute readOr, in English, he likes to hit the ball. It always strikes us that ‘feel bat on ball’ sounds altogether too sensual for something that’s actually quite percussive and violent. After all, you wouldn’t say about a drunken brawler: ‘He loves the feel of fist on face and the sensation

July 8, 2015 Australia / England

Joe Root survives the pea-rollers to welly a hundred despite not remotely being ‘due’

< 1 minute readThe 2015 Ashes started with a hail of bouncers. Double-bouncers, triple-bouncers and a few outright grub-hunters. It was intimidating stuff from the perspective of an ankle – although the puddingness of the pitch did at least simplify things for the bowlers, allowing them to both pitch it short and hit

July 7, 2015 Australia / England / Pakistan

It’s time for some new source material

< 1 minute readEngland’s players have been treated to an afternoon of Beefy rest day anecdotes, while Michael Clarke’s babbling on about ‘the line’ for the billionth time (“I think everyone knows where the line is,” he said this week – if not, we certainly know where we can hear about it). It’s