King Cricket

July 5, 2014 England

Andrew Strauss lets rip about Kevin Pietersen

< 1 minute readApparently Andrew Strauss has been caught calling Kevin Pietersen ‘the C-word’ during a commentary stint. He thought he was off-air, but they were actually still broadcasting in Australia. Being as this is Strauss, we’re presuming that the word used was ‘cad’. We’re quite taken aback by this. Our guess would

July 4, 2014 Extras

Before we get into England v India

< 1 minute readCan we just remind you that we also write a Tour de France website. The race starts tomorrow and the first three days promise to be ‘a big deal’ because they’re in the UK. Stage two on Sunday is the one we’re most looking forward to, but we’ll be covering

July 3, 2014 England

Which fast-medium all-rounders should England pick?

< 1 minute readShould they pick the batsman who bowls slippery fast-medium (Ben Stokes), the fast-medium bowler who can bat (Chris Jordan), the faster fast-medium bowler who can bat (Liam Plunkett) or the fast-medium bowler who really can bat (Chris Woakes)? All are good players, but even an eskimo may from time to

July 2, 2014 Match report

Middlesex v Lancashire in the County Championship – match report

3 minute readGed writes: Over Easter, the Lancastrian nephew-in-law, Escamillo Escapillo (EE) and I schemed to meet up for the Middlesex v Lancashire fixture at Lord’s this year, even if we could only manage half-a-day off during the working week. In the flurry of subsequent e-mails and texts, I said that I

July 1, 2014 Extras

The cult of digging in

< 1 minute readOver the weekend, Cricinfo published an article of ours about the English hatred of ‘giving it away’ and how it gives rise to a way of batting which is fundamentally unproductive. It’s called Why so passive, England? and it’s another angle on the whole proactive batting thing we’ve been so

June 30, 2014 New Zealand

The New Zealand team is a sperm whale

< 1 minute readSperm whales have pretty small brains. If you saw one, it would look massive, but they’re small brains in relative terms because sperm whales are massively massive. In Moby Dick, Herman Melville makes the case that the small brain is compensated for by the whale’s giant vertebrae, the first few

June 27, 2014 Extras

Performing away from home

< 1 minute readA bit of housekeeping. We’ve had some of our articles published on other websites. First up, The Shire Horse, our fortnightly thing for All Out Cricket. This week’s edition makes fun of some things that England players have said, has a bit about Lancashire’s batting and then there are the

June 27, 2014 Australia / England

Alastair Cook v Shane Warne – who’s the bigger idiot?

< 1 minute readWill Alastair Cook learn his lesson? Most people know that it’s incredibly unwise for the England captain to demand that critics be less critical. But not Cook, apparently. He recently said that “something needs to be done” about Shane Warne’s relentless criticism of his captaincy. The headline of Warne’s latest

June 25, 2014 England

Fatigue is cumulative – so bowl Moeen Ali

2 minute readSorry that we keep harping on about that period of play when England got caught in fast-medium purgatory, but it really was when the game got away from England. A number of factors conspired to create the horror. As well as poor bowling and limp captaincy, tiredness played a part.

June 24, 2014 England / Sri Lanka

Moeen Ali and Jimmy Anderson – kings in defeat

2 minute readThe final pole was taken with just a cherry to spare. But just as a snatched draw wouldn’t have erased England’s shoddy cricket from the previous day, so falling short shouldn’t negate the efforts of Moeen Ali and Jimmy Anderson. Jimmy was basically in tears when Mike Atherton tried to