King Cricket

December 10, 2012 England / India

England’s Eden Gardens Test win, four-man bowling attacks and Zaheer Khan

2 minute readWe’ll be honest, we’re struggling to know what to say about England’s win at Eden Gardens. Comparing our preview to the scorecard kind of puts things in perspective. The current fashion seems to be to denigrate India, but that’s only half the story. The other half most revolves around Alastair

December 8, 2012 England / India

India have a bad day at the crease

2 minute readR Ashwin is a good batsman, but no-one considers him to be one of the best six batsman in India. In that case, why is it that he seems to be thriving with the bat while the specialists are batting like a big bag of grundle? There’s no simple answer.

December 7, 2012 England / India

India have a bad day in the field

< 1 minute readIndia have an amazing ability to take a bad day in the field and make it look worse. It’s a flat pitch and they managed to take five wickets (although none for the man with ‘the best wrist in cricket’) but yet it seemed far more horrendous than that. Mostly

December 6, 2012 England / India

Guess we’ll write about Alastair Cook

< 1 minute readDoes Alastair Cook know that captains are allowed off the field? If he doesn’t, no-one tip him off, because it’s going quite well. In five Tests leading England, he’s now scored five hundreds. He even hit some nice shots today, which isn’t really the point. An Alastair Cook innings shouldn’t

December 5, 2012 India

Yuvraj Singh never quite does it

< 1 minute readA few years ago, it was hard to avoid the feeling that Yuvraj Singh’s favourite cricketer was probably, on balance, after much careful consideration, Yuvraj Singh. However, he’s increasingly rounded and likeable and so it’s disappointing to see him merely flicker in Test cricket. Today’s innings was vintage Yuvraj. He

December 4, 2012 England / India

Something about the third Test

< 1 minute readIt’s not that we’ve got nothing to say ahead of the Kolkata Test, it’s that we’ve already previewed the match. You want more than that? You want something timely? Okay, how about whether Steven Finn should play? We’d say that if he’s fit, he should play, because Stuart Broad seems

December 3, 2012 Australia / South Africa

Australia’s fresh bowlers deliver fresh pies

< 1 minute readAustralia were probably down to their third-string attack in the third Test. We’re not sure how deep ‘bench strength’ needs to be these days, but they might want to stay shallower next time they play. This bowling attack was Australia’s choice, but Mitchell Johnson is basically a bowling machine set

November 30, 2012 Australia / South Africa

Should Test cricket be about identifying the best team or the best squad?

< 1 minute readA couple of days ago, we wrote about the slow erosion of a Test team over the course of a series. This is part of the game, but at what point does it become too pronounced? Australia have omitted their two main pace bowlers for the third and final Test

November 29, 2012 Australia

Ricky Ponting’s batting average and face

3 minute readTake a look at this face. Tell us you don’t instantly hate that face. You could pretty accurately track the progress of Ricky Ponting’s career by our opinion of his face at various points in time. It started badly. He made his first Test hundred in his first Ashes innings

November 28, 2012 Australia / South Africa

A three-Test marathon for Australia and South Africa

2 minute readThe modern Test series is more about endurance than ever before. It may feature fewer matches, but with little pause between them, it is more like one ongoing slog than a sequence of distinct skirmishes. We’ll see this vividly in the third and decisive Test between Australia and South Africa