King Cricket

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

May 18, 2015 Extras / Regulars

Geoff Boycott to star in Triffids remake

2 minute readHere’s a moment from the final scene when Geoff finds himself surrounded by a gang of maize. Okay, we’ll admit that’s a lie. Boycott’s Triffids film is being kept closely under wraps and they would never give away crucial plot information like this. The photo is actually from a press

May 15, 2015 England

The week in politics

2 minute readLike a tired bear in winter, let’s try and put this to bed for a few days. Maybe it’ll have to get up again at some point next week to go for a wee, but we’re kind of hoping that we can concentrate on the New Zealand series from now

May 13, 2015 County cricket

Middlesex fail to be anywhere other than top of the table

2 minute readTime for a County Championship update. The crucial piece of information is that Middlesex are now top. If Sussex defied their top order runlessness to take an early lead, Middlesex have for the most part adopted a different approach. Their strategy seems to involve spending quite a lot of time

May 12, 2015 England / Regulars

The ECB takes aim at its prosthetic foot

3 minute readWhat may eventually prove to be Kevin Pietersen’s final six scoring strokes in first-class cricket were, in order, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. At that point, there was nowhere left to go. A friend of ours was referred to a heart specialist once. As he sat in the