King Cricket

January 28, 2013 Extras

Ed Giddins to Matt Horne – dot ball

< 1 minute readWelcome to our new, three-part series, Cricket’s Greatest Dot Balls. We hope you like it. The backdrop It was the fourth Test of the 1999 Test series between England and New Zealand. Ed Giddins was making his Test debut and no-one knew quite how significant that was going to prove.

January 25, 2013 Extras

Next week on King Cricket

< 1 minute readOn the radio, they call this ‘throwing forward’. That’s a good thing on the radio, but it’s a crime in rugby. You can decide for yourselves what it is on a cricket blog. Monday to Wednesday will see something we’re really excited about. It is a short, three-part feature looking

January 24, 2013 West Indies

The next Chanderpaul

< 1 minute readNormally, when someone talks about ‘the next so-and-so’ it’s a load of old cobblers, but there really is another Chanderpaul – it’s Shiv’s son. Even better, he’s almost, but not quite, named after a fruit. Tagenarine Chanderpaul is set to make his first-class debut in February, even though he’s only

January 23, 2013 England / India

Acquiescence and the art of securing an unremarkable defeat

< 1 minute readEngland scored not-enough-runs and then India made slightly more. England’s wasn’t so much a one-day innings as an impression of a one-day innings; an approximation involving steady accumulation and later acceleration, only without either segment being quite what it should have been. We get the impression that Alastair Cook had

January 22, 2013 New Zealand / South Africa

New Zealand beat a South Africa team

< 1 minute readWell played Kane Williamson for scoring 145 not out and well played the rest of you for fielding competently. We’re sure he’ll be delighted about it, but we’re not too sure that Captain Brendon McCullum can take enormous pride in beating a South Africa side featuring the following luminaries: Quinton

January 21, 2013 India

Ravindra Jadeja, school cricket and playing for the turn

2 minute readIn some parts of England, they talk about ‘schools cricket’ – note the plural. This is a bizarre, alien form of the game in which posh 15-year-olds play on immaculate grounds in exquisite locations having been expertly coached by former internationals. ‘School cricket’ (singular) is rather different. In school cricket,

January 18, 2013 Australia / Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s new ball attack

< 1 minute readAustralians aren’t always particularly polite about the standard of the opposition. In a way, this is okay, because they’re equally happy to wheel out brutal opinions about their own team when they don’t do well. On the other hand, it does mean that the rest of us can portray dismissive

January 17, 2013 England

England seam bowling stock-take

2 minute readThe problem with giving people names is that we tend to associate certain qualities with those names. This doesn’t happen with bananas. Bananas are interchangeable and are evaluated for what they are. If they’re at peak ripeness, hurray! If they’re bruised and old, we replace them with new bananas. This

January 16, 2013 Extras

On this site five years ago

< 1 minute readThe great thing about making no discernible progress in life is that when there isn’t anything you want to write about, you know where to look to find what you wrote five years ago. On the 16th January, 2008, this website was updated not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES.

January 15, 2013 England / India

Jade Dernbach – where do we all stand on this at the minute?

2 minute readBack when everyone was going mental about Jade Dernbach and his ‘variations’ we pointed out that he was essentially half a bowler. He did the eye-catching things well, but he was fairly useless at the everyday stuff that’s equally important. Shortly after that, we argued that he shouldn’t be dropped,