King Cricket

December 14, 2013 Australia / England

Kevin Pietersen and caricatured batting

2 minute readKevin Pietersen can often look a caricature of a batsman. Look at his leave. When he leaves a ball, Jesus Christ it stays left. The ball really knows it hasn’t been hit following KP’s huge, flourishing, circular withdrawal of the bat. Today, Pietersen batted sensibly and in keeping with this

December 13, 2013 Australia / England

Brad Haddin is kind of shameless

2 minute readBowlers win you matches, but batsmen lose them. Is there really much point weighing up day one of the third Test when England’s batsmen might render all that preceded it almost entirely irrelevant? May as well go through the motions, just in case. Five down A growing theme of this

December 12, 2013 England

A short, to-the-point Perth preview

< 1 minute readEngland picked the ganglesome trio of Steven Finn, Boyd Rankin and Chris Tremlett for this Ashes tour specifically in order to exploit hard, bouncy Australian pitches. Perth is the hardest, bounciest pitch of all and it seems reasonably likely that none of these bowlers will play. Assuming they don’t, what

December 12, 2013 England / Extras

The state of the cricketing nation

2 minute readWe’ve a growing problem with what might be called the ‘dissection of the nation’s cricket system’ piece. More specifically, we’ve a problem with the increasing readiness to publish such articles. The state of the cricketing nation piece is when a writer draws far-reaching conclusions about the way the sport is

December 10, 2013 Match report

Ireland/England v England/Ireland match report from Malahide

2 minute readChuck writes: I have never been to a cricket match of any description, level or length, even though it is my all time favourite sport. Despite that, or maybe because of it, I had absolutely no intention of attending the Ireland/England versus England/Ireland one-day international in Malahide in person. (Old

December 8, 2013 Australia / England

England’s batting improves a bit

2 minute readLet’s not go overboard. There are two ways to look at England’s second innings. The first is to see it as indicative of an upward curve, which gives hope for the rest of the series. The second is to say that standards are now so low that it would actually

December 7, 2013 Australia / England

The tufty-haired boulder and the blancmange

< 1 minute readThe escape route outlined in yesterday’s article? England evaded it perfectly, opting instead to stand their ground, whereupon they were flattened by the giant, tufty-haired boulder which has been rumbling after them since they landed Down Under. The most frustrating thing is that, for all the devastation, Mitchell Johnson only

December 6, 2013 Australia / England

Same faces, different players – but an opportunity for England

3 minute readToday was a nice little primer in how to approach Test cricket in Australia. It called for extremes. England didn’t really have any. It was all a bit fast-medium. We blame Steven Finn for this. On England’s last Ashes tour, he was exactly the right kind of bowler for Australian

December 5, 2013 England

Who is Ben Stokes?

< 1 minute readAnd what does he look like? Just Google it… You can always rely on Google.

December 5, 2013 Australia / England

Scrawniness and self-floggery

< 1 minute readSo where are we? No-one knows – which is the way it should be. What we do know is that England could have had one, two and, in theory, three more wickets if they’d caught better. We also know that England’s batting looks lighter than Michael Rasmussen. Stop going on