King Cricket

May 30, 2015 England / New Zealand

A series of things for which it’s quite hard to come up with an appropriate headline

< 1 minute readQ: What do you call a donkey that was born in New Zealand, grew up in Australia, got a snorter first ball in his first Test but survived and went on to make 88 off 70 balls? A: A Ronchi It’s probably not the greatest joke, but that’s not what

May 28, 2015 England

England are playing

< 1 minute readSo are New Zealand. It’s a Test match. You’ll probably have something to say. Leave your comments on this post while we busy ourself desperately trying to come up with something insightful and pithy to say about the first day’s play. If you’re interested in our thoughts while the match

May 27, 2015 Match report

Lancashire v Middlesex in the County Championship – match report

3 minute readGed writes: It was the last day of the cricket season and I was working that day – mostly from home. I got urgent stuff out of the way first thing, with a view to going to the gym mid to late morning, ahead of my one meeting of the

May 26, 2015 England

England have a new coach!

< 1 minute readHe’s called Nigel or something. We’re not sure. We haven’t really been paying attention. From what we can tell, he’s been coaching a club in South Wales and he once appeared in an episode of Knight Rider. He seems well qualified. Jason Gillespie had of course been the favourite for

May 25, 2015 England / New Zealand

Like that dumpling from the Caribbean place last week, this match may well take a day or two to digest

< 1 minute readImagine going back in time and trying to tell cynical, world-weary you from a week ago about this match. “England were 30-4 inside the first hour of day one,” you’d say. “Yeah, that seems about right,” Earlier You would reply. “And they then conceded 523 in New Zealand’s first innings,”

May 24, 2015 England

Ben Stokes: Brutal Deluxe

2 minute readThere are times for thoughtful analysis and there are times for giddy enthusiasm. Today is clearly the latter. At the peak of his powers, if you said the name ‘Flintoff’ to someone during a match with the right look in your eye, that person would immediately drop whatever they were

May 22, 2015 England / New Zealand

New Zealand have something atop their spine

< 1 minute readLooks like we’re gonna need a bigger skull. A year ago we wrote about how New Zealand’s first few vertebrae – the batsmen at three, four, five and six – needed to be (metaphorically) full of brainy gloop to make up for shortcomings at the top. After a 148-run opening

May 21, 2015 England / New Zealand

Joe Root hasn’t made a hundred in England for almost a year

2 minute readWe’re thinking about trying to get more into selective use of statistics. It seems to be a big thing in cricket, but we’re not off to a great start. Truth is it’s barely been nine months since Joe Root last made a hundred in England. Actually, we didn’t specify Test

May 20, 2015 County cricket

A bit less County Championship?

< 1 minute readNo bad thing in our eyes. We’re a great believer in scarcity making something more attractive. Take northern hairy-nosed wombats, for example. Phwoar. Similarly, four-day matches might become something other than sporting wallpaper if there are fewer of them. We had to follow the County Championship as part of our

May 19, 2015 England

England captain, coach and director – how are the roles defined?

< 1 minute readToo many cooks? Too many Cooks? Who’s responsible for what in this new England team hierarchy? We’ve just spent half an hour writing and rewriting a paragraph trying to explain how we think things are going to work. Clearly, we have no idea. We came up with some sort of