King Cricket

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

June 23, 2014 England / Sri Lanka

Angelo Mathews pulls off skin and something special

< 1 minute readJust because it’s only a two-Test series, it doesn’t mean you’re playing Bangladesh. This Sri Lanka side is a good one. If anything, it’s their achievements that are being devalued by the quality of the opposition. But they can only beat what’s put in front of them. In this Test,

June 23, 2014 England / Sri Lanka

One of our worst nightmares

< 1 minute readOur worst nightmare was probably the one where we had toothache and when the tooth came out, it turned out to be a kind of keystone for our entire skull. With a groaning, creaking sound akin to falling timber, our entire head split in two – ONLY WE DIDN’T WAKE

June 23, 2014 England

The doughy tenacity of Gary Ballance and why he makes Test cricket feel more significant

< 1 minute readWe’re a day late with this really, but maybe it’s taken that long to fully sink in. Gary Ballance is our new favourite batsman. We know Sam Robson scored a hundred, but we’ve not yet warmed to him in quite the same way. There were too many edges. Ballance, despite

June 21, 2014 England

Liam Plunkett bowls some good fast-medium

< 1 minute readThere was a period, just after tea, when England started looking decidedly fast-medium. Fortunately for Alastair Cook, it was a day when persisting with right-arm fast-medium wasn’t actually the worst ploy imaginable and Kumar Sangakkara’s wicket precipitated a sudden flow of wickets that gushed so strongly that most people didn’t

June 19, 2014 England

Defining the proactive batsman

3 minute readIt can be hard to read your own words. We don’t mean because of the quality of your handwriting (our penmanship has atrophied to the point that we’re reduced to using block capitals now). We mean that it’s impossible to read something you’ve written for meaning; to see the words