King Cricket

March 31, 2014 Associates / England

Oh for complacency to be an option

< 1 minute readStuart Broad cited batting complacency as the main reason for England losing to the Netherlands. Ashley Giles agreed, saying that was the only possible reason for the defeat. “They’re not playing well enough to be complacent,” pointed out Mike Atherton. We’re not as downbeat as you might think about this

March 29, 2014 England / South Africa

Death by seam bowling

2 minute readWe’re not in favour of demonising individuals. But three runs, Jade. Three runs. That’s all that was in it. Couldn’t someone have saved three runs somewhere along the way? Maybe Jos Buttler’s missed stumping proved costly. Would a specialist wicketkeeper have made the difference, or would that merely have meant

March 29, 2014 Australia / West Indies

James Faulkner can even make Chris Gayle lose his cool

< 1 minute read“I don’t particularly like them,” said James Faulkner before Australia played the West Indies. He must positively detest them now. Here’s another Faulkner quote. “If you can do something to upset somebody and upset their team, it goes a long way towards doing well as a group.” He got that the

March 28, 2014 England

Moeen Ali and “planning for the future”

< 1 minute readThe concept of ‘planning for the future’ is often used to explain the inclusion of younger players in favour of perhaps superior older players. This preference is often presented as being ‘an investment’. That, on the face of it, is a perfectly valid modus operandi. It gives the sense that

March 27, 2014 England / Sri Lanka

Alex Hales gets England’s first T20 hundred – and a surprise win

< 1 minute read“It’s all over baby, because this one’s headed to the moon!” You can always rely on Danny Morrison to deliver fitting commentary on the denouement of a compelling match. A few minutes earlier, he’d used the word ‘whippage’. He was on form. So was Alex Hales, who hit the first

March 27, 2014 England / Sri Lanka

Moeen Ali v Lasith Malinga

2 minute readIn Cricinfo’s preview, it is suggested that England might target Ajantha Mendis. That is the best plan going: England batsmen targeting a weird spin bowler – England’s batsmen being famously good against weird spin bowlers. But it’s that or try and hit Lasith Malinga for six, so attacking Mendis it

March 25, 2014 England

England’s World T20 campaign so far

< 1 minute readThere was lightning and then some of you made a decent fist of defining what a ‘ferret’ is. Wine was drunk, commetators were pilloried, Cricinfo scorecards were badmouthed. Business as usual. We feel we’re now right back up to speed in time for the remainder of the tournament. We’re particularly

March 22, 2014 England / New Zealand

What happened in the England v New Zealand match?

< 1 minute readWe’re going to miss this match, so you’re going to have take up the slack and deliver our usual insightful, in-depth reportage in the comments section yourselves. If you divvy the work up between a few hundred of your pets, we’re sure you can produce something approaching our usual quality.

March 21, 2014 India / Pakistan

India v Pakistan was actually quite, quite rubbish

< 1 minute readWe can officially reveal that India v Pakistan in the World T20 wasn’t quite interesting enough to prevent keen cricket fans from going out to buy eggs and then out again, a second time, to post something. To put this in context, we would rank posting letters right up there

March 21, 2014 Associates

That Tom Cooper thing’s turning out to be a good move

< 1 minute readNefariousness can be a virtue, it seems. Tim Gruijters and his bad-but-by-no-means-debilitating back probably wouldn’t have hit 45 off 15 balls, vaulting the Netherlands from third place in their group into the Super 10 stage of the World T20. However, his replacement, Tom Cooper, managed it – just like that.