King Cricket

February 6, 2014 England

The art of being a team player, Pietersen-style

2 minute readIn our experience, the employees most likely to be considered ‘team players’ are the obedient, unquestioning ones. Management may make great show of inviting feedback – and they may honestly believe that they’re open to it – but the truth is that no-one makes a decision thinking it is the

February 4, 2014 England

How do you carry out long-term planning? (a Pietersen post)

2 minute readRemember when England dropped Nick Compton? At the time, we thought maybe they were getting a little bit ahead of themselves. People said Joe Root was amazing and there were loads of other amazing batsmen queuing up to play for England and come on, come on, bring us the future;

February 4, 2014 England

Kevin Pietersen and the lost specifics

2 minute readGranted, we work for them, but we’ve been very impressed with Cricinfo recently – specifically with regards to their near-refusal to report on the latest ‘Kevin Pietersen situation’. They’ve pretty much restricted themselves to one ‘it’s being reported that senior figures are to meet on Tuesday to decide the future

February 3, 2014 Australia / England

Travelling without wheels

2 minute readIt’s hard to pinpoint precisely when the final wheel fell off. It was probably a couple of months ago, but England’s cricketers have had to continue shoving “it” along anyway. No wonder they ended up going round in circles. It’s not been the best tour. In a vain effort to

January 31, 2014 England

Honestly, you go for one lunchtime pint…

< 1 minute readAnd England give their coach the boot. At least that’s the case according to ‘reports’. We’re not actually suggesting that the two events are linked. We’re just struck by the fact that we’ve been sitting around checking the cricket news once every four minutes for the whole of the last

January 30, 2014 Australia / England / India

Where are we up to with ‘the draft proposal’?

< 1 minute readWe ask that not even knowing whether it’s still a draft or not? When does a draft proposal become an official proposal? When they actually come to vote on it? Presumably that’ll only happen once everything’s been thrashed out, in which case official proposal status will be a transient and

January 29, 2014 Australia / England

Of entrenchment and disillusion

< 1 minute readIt doesn’t really matter which format gave rise to it, no-one wants to see a headline reading ‘Australia’s mastery entrenched’, which is what we just saw over at Cricinfo. Nothing good is ever entrenched. Tuesday night pub night isn’t entrenched, despite having persisted for over a decade. Nor is our

January 28, 2014 India

Return of the bits and pieces cricketer

< 1 minute readIndia picked Ronnie Irani. Hurray! The Ronnie Irani in question is Stuart Binny. Speaking at the toss, MS Dhoni said that he would give India a lower order batsman and an additional bowling option. Needless to say, Binny bowls a bit of medium-pace. How appropriate that he should make his

January 27, 2014 Australia / England

Specialism or dilution? Questions for this latest month of Australia v England matches

< 1 minute readOn the face of it, there should be plenty to say about the fifth one-day international, but shortly after watching it we didn’t feel moved to write anything. A day later, we’re left with one abiding truth: we should feel a little more strongly than ‘peeved’ when England throw away

January 24, 2014 Australia / England

England beat some Australian players

2 minute readAlthough, admittedly, you could just as easily say that some England players beat some Australian players. England were down a Pietersen and an Anderson, but Australia were down a Clarke, a Warner, a Watson, a Haddin and we can’t actually be bothered working out who else would be in the