King Cricket

February 14, 2015 Australia / England

England hit the ground, not running, but with exceptional conservation of energy

< 1 minute readThis World Cup’s a marathon not a sprint. The last thing you want to do is hit the ground running. You want to hit the ground with a wet splat; look up; slowly get your bearings; and then start crawling in about a fortnight’s time. You want to reach a

February 13, 2015 England

Why we want England to win the World Cup

2 minute readThis shouldn’t really need writing on an England cricket website, but there’s a lot of cynicism about so we thought we’d state our position. We had what may or may not be considered a ‘Twitter rant’ earlier. We’d been reading various previews from various writers from various nations and had

February 13, 2015 England

Which cricketers are world class?

< 1 minute readWhen the England captain ain’t making runs, the drill goes like this: journalist asks one of his team-mates about his loss of form; team-mate describes him as ‘world class’ and says there’s nothing to worry about. It was Joe Root earlier in the week and now it’s Jimmy Anderson’s turn.

February 12, 2015 New Zealand

Which cricketers possess X-factor? A comprehensive guide

< 1 minute readHow do you measure X-factor? Does it come in units or is it a subtance. Does Glenn Maxwell give you one X-factor or does he provide you with a few centilitres of X-factor that you can pool along with whatever can be provided by Mitchell Johnson, David Warner and Xavier

February 11, 2015 England / Pakistan

England appear to be playing and beating Pakistan

< 1 minute readWe’re struggling with the build-up to the World Cup. We fundamentally believe that a World Cup is a big deal, but at the same time we’re aware of the need to ration our enthusiasm. It might be another month before one of the major teams has to play a match

February 9, 2015 Regulars

Mop-up of the day – warm-ups, schmarm ups

< 1 minute readAustralia obliterated India, England battered the Windies and all for nought. World Cup pressure is not yet here and in fact probably won’t be here until the 18th of March when the quarter finals finally get underway. Even so, these were striking results. England dismissed the Windies for 122 and

February 7, 2015 Extras

How the value of a six relates to apple consumption

< 1 minute readOur latest Cricinfo piece has been a huge hit. Here’s what the critics are saying about it. “Assume someone eats 10 apples per day and wants to reduce the number of apples he eats per day. He decides to counts two apples as one(or one as half) and claims that

February 5, 2015 Cricket books | reviews and recommendations / England

KP: The Autobiography – book review

3 minute readA guest review of KP: The Autobiography by Dandy Dan. Having met KP and most of team, I feel I’m very qualified to review this book – especially as he came across to me as actually being all right. I didn’t buy it. I got it out from the library.

February 4, 2015 Extras

Aggression, aggressive batting and viral-induced half-arsedness

< 1 minute readWe appear to have been struck down by lack-of-altitude sickness or summat, so here’s a perfunctory ticking-the-boxes, phoning-it-in update linking to something we wrote for someone else. Aggression and aggressive batting – we covered it here on King Cricket fairly comprehensively, but yet still felt moved to write something for

February 3, 2015 Pakistan / Regulars

The other 10 World Cup cricketers to watch

2 minute readWe could do the same Kohli, de Villiers, Johnson list as everyone else or we could pick out 10 players who you’ll actually have to make some effort to watch. So, in no particular order… Misbah-ul-Haq, Pakistan 40 years old and ostensibly a plodder, Misbah recently matched Viv Richards’ record