King Cricket

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

December 4, 2013 England

Jimmy Anderson doing an impression of Nasser Hussain

< 1 minute readWe can only do one impression and it’s an impression of our friend Neal doing an impression of himself. Not only are there very few people who could potentially appreciate it – it also isn’t particularly good. We are therefore filled with admiration for Jimmy Anderson and his note-perfect mimicry

December 4, 2013 Cricket books | reviews and recommendations

Tutenkhamen’s Tracksuit and other Christmas cricket books

4 minute readA quick bit of housekeeping before the second Test. We received a review copy of Alan Tyers’ new book a few weeks ago and haven’t yet said anything about it. On a related note, we’ll freely admit to not having read all of the cricket books, so if you’ve any

December 3, 2013 New Zealand

Brendon McCullum hits an actual hundred

< 1 minute readBrendon McCullum is a man whose batting achievements don’t exactly tally with his profile. He’s bolstered his reputation with captaincy and wicketkeeping and the peculiar nature of his one-day assaults, but he basically has a very middling record with the bat. However, he has just scored his eighth Test hundred

December 2, 2013 Australia / England

England can’t bat and Australia can’t bat

2 minute readOkay, let’s take stock. England can’t bat and Australia can’t bat. Generalising masks specific truths, but this is actually a fair summary of where we stand. Mo’tchell Johnson has gathered headlines, but England also failed to score off Ryan Harris (forgivable) and shed middle order wickets against Nathan Lyon (probably

November 28, 2013 Cricket computer games | reviews, previews and downloads | PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, Wii

Ashes Cricket 2013 looks jeffing amazing

< 1 minute readAt least it does if you’re a connoisseur of games which have really bad bugs. We once spent an entire afternoon trying to get a game to reproduce the caption “Docking completercycle”. As such, this looks magic to our eyes. They should rename it “Stuart Broad v The Netherlands Simulator”.

November 28, 2013 Extras

Yearning for a good old-fashioned display of incompetence

< 1 minute readWriting this kind of a website, there’s an optimum level of seriousness when it comes to bad news. Good news is hard to write about, but so is truly bad news like the current Jonathan Trott thing. What’s easiest is a good old-fashioned display of incompetence. That gives you something