King Cricket

August 14, 2013 Australia

Gooey foundations and a lack of curse words

< 1 minute readDirk Nannes has written about second XI cricket over at All Out Cricket. He draws attention to Greg Chappell’s decision to limit Australian state second XI teams to just three players over the age of 23 back in 2009. Chappell’s thinking appears to betray a belief that older players who

August 12, 2013 Australia / England

Australia, you have been sherminated

< 1 minute readWell that was – actually, what was that? It’s probably a bit early to be committing to specific words, so let’s not. England have won the Ashes. That’s a functional way of saying it. You can add your own emotions internally. England won every Test in which Ian Bell scored

August 12, 2013 Australia / England

When every run matters

< 1 minute readWe’ve almost certainly written about this 12 times before, but cricket is at its best when the value of a run is greatest. A drop of rain is more gratefully received in the Outback than in the Lake District. It’s hard to judge what would be a decisive lead going

August 11, 2013 England

Flattening stuff with Ian Bell

< 1 minute readWhen did Ian Bell turn into a big, relentless steamroller? He always used to be a two-seater sports car. He was sleek and flash, but entirely impractical when you came to do the big shop. These days he’s not just practical, he’s reliable as well. His big engine chunters away

August 10, 2013 Australia

Chris Rogers is pretty good at edging it

2 minute readThat sounds like a backhanded compliment, but as a right-hander who bats left-handed, Rogers shouldn’t see backhand as being necessarily inferior. Edges We’re not sure we’ve ever seen a batsman miss and edge the ball quite as much as Chris Rogers did today. It was unreal. You can take it

August 9, 2013 Australia / England

Batting stagnation’s not what you need

2 minute readOne of our greatest attributes is being annoying. One of the ways in which we achieve this is by inserting words ending in -ation into the Record Breakers theme tune instead of ‘dedication’. You can read the title again now, if you want – although we advise against it. Jonathan

August 9, 2013 Australia

Jackson Bird is not a 1970s American rock band

< 1 minute readWe’re telling ourself this as much as anyone else. It’s the first thing we think whenever we see his name. Maybe stating the thought in a post title will finally purge it, allowing us to concentrate on other things. We’re guessing that Jackson Bird is going to play the fourth

August 7, 2013 Regulars

Monty’s unacceptable urination

< 1 minute readYou may remember our cat, Monty. Here he is being conspicuously indifferent to cricket a few years back. He’s actually sitting on the cricket pages, the heathen. What you might not know about Monty is that he likes to piss on things. On one memorable occasion, he walked into the

August 7, 2013 Australia

David Warner’s inner chimp

2 minute readBritish Cycling’s psychiatrist, Steve Peters, wrote a book called The Chimp Paradox. The basic premise is that the emotional, impulsive parts of your brain can almost be considered a separate being – the inner chimp. We respond to things emotionally, but it’s often better to suppress these reactions and first

August 5, 2013 Australia / England

Tinkering with spaghetti

2 minute readSo where does this leave us? Ashes retention is technically ticked off, but the series is not yet decided. Australia have returned to Test cricket and England have been a little bit disappointing in how they’ve responded to that. England’s bowling, Australia’s batting Young Australian batsmen like Chris Rogers and