King Cricket

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.

March 20, 2014 England

Six reasons why England will win the World T20

< 1 minute readEveryone likes a list. Unless it’s for the big shop. We never use a list when food shopping and last week, planning on doing a roast followed by cheese, we bought everything bar the chicken and the cheese. So it goes. But away from the fluorescent-illuminated stationary trolleys of dawdling

March 19, 2014 England

The unpredictability of Twenty20 plays right into England’s buttery hands

< 1 minute readIf there is to be any drama in England’s T20 World Cup campaign, it seems likely that it will come in the form of a very formulaic, second-rate sitcom. We’re expecting the most noteworthy performance in every match to be one of the batsmen making 40-odd off as many balls.

March 18, 2014 Cricket books | reviews and recommendations

Start the Car: The World According to Bumble – book review

3 minute readWe finally got round to reading this. Oddly, this hasn’t clarified whether it’s worth reading or not. A friend who follows cricket fairly closely but who at the time hadn’t watched much of Sky’s coverage, once asked us about David Lloyd. He’d got the impression that Bumble was this self-consciously