King Cricket

March 7, 2015 Pakistan / South Africa

Pakistan, AB de Villiers, wickets and jeopardy

< 1 minute readCricket needs jeopardy. Jeopardy makes things exciting. You have jeopardy in a tournament – the chance of being knocked out – and lo, the match is exciting. Something is riding on it. Tension’s good. You have jeopardy in an innings – the chance of being bowled out – and you

March 5, 2015 Extras

Breaking 2019 World Cup format news

< 1 minute readSomewhere, in a dark, neglected, cobweb-strewn corner of the Cricinfo homepage, an article of ours was briefly accessible. You may have missed it because Mark Nicholas was hogging all the prime real e-state. The article in question is about the format of the World Cup – same as all cricket

March 4, 2015 Extras / Pakistan

Why the world no longer truly understands the majesty of Shahid Afridi

< 1 minute readWe watched a bunch of sixes today. Well, we say ‘watched’. What we actually mean is that we heard commentators overreacting to sixes while writing something. We didn’t look up once. We live in a different world, nowadays. We’ve tried to take you back to the old one in our

March 3, 2015 England

Mop-up of the day – not really as related to cricket as you might think

< 1 minute readMuch as we enjoy writing about administrative staff, what they think and what they may or may not have meant when they said something in an interview, we rather feel that the World Cup is a time for writing about actual cricket. Colin Graves has said some things, the ECB

March 1, 2015 England

Parties, par, pace and predictability

2 minute readIn a run-chase, pressure doesn’t just come from the bowling you face. It comes from the relationship between the bowling you face and the runs you need. We haven’t yet seen England’s defence of 310, but our initial feeling is that Eoin Morgan’s belief that the bowlers were at fault

February 28, 2015 Australia / New Zealand

Kane Williamson demonstrates how to hit a six

2 minute readWhen New Zealand played Australia, the bowlers won and cricket was all the better for it. Runs are not a sensible unit of measurement when gauging the value of the ‘product’. AB de Villiers is a genius and deserves every plaudit that comes his way, but Kane Williamson’s 45 off

February 27, 2015 South Africa

How bad can a fifth bowler be?

< 1 minute readThis appears to be South Africa’s thinking after picking only four proper bowlers. It should present a vulnerability, but when you then make 408, you find you have a certain amount of breathing space – perhaps even enough that you could field Jade Dernbach and still harbour reasonable hopes of

February 26, 2015 Afghanistan / Associates

Samiullah Shenwari really was worth watching

< 1 minute readAfghanistan have won their first World Cup match. It was only the fifth one wicket win in the history of the tournament. With Ireland beating the UAE by two wickets yesterday, it doesn’t need saying that the Associates have provided more than their fair share of entertainment. But we’ll say

February 24, 2015 West Indies

How big is Chris Gayle?

< 1 minute readWe’d say that Chris Gayle’s biggest achievement today was looking like a relatively small person. The route to achieving this wasn’t easy. He first had to hit a double hundred and this then allowed him the opportunity to stand next to Ian Bishop at the post-match press conference. Bishop appears

February 23, 2015 England / India / South Africa

Lower orders and the last 10 overs

3 minute readAt the start of the tournament, we highlighted a weakness of South Africa’s – the fact that their batting order “quite quickly becomes a little bit Farhaan Behardien”. This weekend, it just as quickly became a little bit Wayne Parnell. That’s a long tail. South Africa’s best batsmen are so