King Cricket

December 3, 2013 New Zealand

Brendon McCullum hits an actual hundred

< 1 minute read Brendon McCullum is a man whose batting achievements don’t exactly tally with his profile. He’s bolstered his reputation with captaincy and wicketkeeping and the peculiar nature of his one-day assaults, but he basically has a very middling record with the bat. However, he has just scored his eighth Test hundred

December 2, 2013 Australia / England

England can’t bat and Australia can’t bat

2 minute read Okay, let’s take stock. England can’t bat and Australia can’t bat. Generalising masks specific truths, but this is actually a fair summary of where we stand. Mo’tchell Johnson has gathered headlines, but England also failed to score off Ryan Harris (forgivable) and shed middle order wickets against Nathan Lyon (probably

November 28, 2013 Cricket computer games | reviews, previews and downloads | PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, Wii

Ashes Cricket 2013 looks jeffing amazing

< 1 minute read At least it does if you’re a connoisseur of games which have really bad bugs. We once spent an entire afternoon trying to get a game to reproduce the caption “Docking completercycle”. As such, this looks magic to our eyes. They should rename it “Stuart Broad v The Netherlands Simulator”.

November 28, 2013 Extras

Yearning for a good old-fashioned display of incompetence

< 1 minute read Writing this kind of a website, there’s an optimum level of seriousness when it comes to bad news. Good news is hard to write about, but so is truly bad news like the current Jonathan Trott thing. What’s easiest is a good old-fashioned display of incompetence. That gives you something

November 27, 2013 Australia

Australia are aggressive when they’re at their best

< 1 minute read It was said that Australia’s ‘in-your-face approach’ underpinned their first Test win in the 2013 Ashes. It’s the kind of thing you hear a lot. Ex-players often plead for the team to be more combative. They say that Australia play their best cricket when they’re aggressive/sledge more. But is it

November 26, 2013 County cricket

Non-demented county cricket fixture list confirmed for 2014

< 1 minute read Sunday starts for County Championship matches and Twenty20 matches on a Friday night. It ain’t all bad. The latter could even become ‘a thing’, as detailed here. Shall we try and make it a thing? What should it involve? Perhaps we could try and source beer brewed in the counties

November 26, 2013 England

Living within the England panopticon

2 minute read Writing in The Times, Mike Atherton has said of the England setup: “The impression is of a closed, institutionalised and claustrophobic world.” We’re sure he chose his words carefully. It’s also worth noting that this is a man who felt the strains of international cricket despite only ever considering it

November 25, 2013 Australia / England

Why has Jonathan Trott gone home from the Ashes?

3 minute read For all that we’re meant to be enlightened, modern folk who are au fait with mental health issues, there’s an odd reluctance to enter into specifics when someone is suffering ‘a stress-related illness’. Physical v mental In a sense, medical problems are nobody’s business but the sportsman in question. It

November 24, 2013 Australia / England

Daubing England’s batsmen with emulsion

2 minute read Today’s grim moment of clarity came courtesy of Mark Butcher midway through the highlights which show immediately after the day’s play. “Michael Clarke made good decisions throughout this match,” he said. Note ‘made’ not ‘has made’. Australia had won then? The rest of the highlights were a joy, particularly when

November 23, 2013 Australia / England

Jonathan Trott and the short ball

2 minute read We’re wondering whether we just saw the most unforgiveable dismissal of all time. There have been worse shots, certainly, but IJL Trott c Lyon b Johnson 9 ticks a lot of boxes. First, there’s the backdrop. For months, the opposition have told you that you can’t play the short ball