King Cricket

July 23, 2012 England / South Africa

England embrace the modern fashion for innings defeats

2 minute readWhen it comes to meticulous planning, individual excellence and the most admirable examples of team spirit, the cyclists seem to have cornered the market here in Britain. The cricket team has rather folded. Can no side merely lose a Test match any more? Nowadays, when good teams fall, it always

July 22, 2012 England

Bowling dry – not a cure-all

< 1 minute readWho are the batsmen who have really troubled England in home Tests in recent years? Rahul Dravid, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Marlon Samuels. And what characterises those three batsmen? An unhurried method, we’d say – they don’t go chasing after the ball. Is this a coincidence? When the ball doesn’t swing,

July 19, 2012 England / South Africa

Alastair Cook – endurance batsman

2 minute readHello South Africa and welcome to England. This is Alastair Cook. He is fitter than you are. We’re not sure you’re going to get on very well. Thus far, South Africa have had a fairly typical experience of touring England. It has rained and Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott have

July 18, 2012 England / South Africa

England v South Africa preview

2 minute readThere seem to be a lot of head to head type previews of this series. We never really get much out of them, because cricket doesn’t really work on a points system. There are no judges comparing the two teams’ attributes. You decide which side’s the better by pitting them

July 17, 2012 Pakistan

Kamran Akmal’s back

< 1 minute readAs in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. Or has he? Actually, that would explain a lot. Lack of core mobility would probably have an impact on catching ability and could potentially give rise to the level of pan-handed buffoonery exhibited by Kamran Akmal. Actually, on second thoughts,

July 15, 2012 Australia

Why we liked Brett Lee

2 minute readTest bowling average v England: 40.61 – what’s not to like? Yes, it’s one of those weird statistics, but Brett Lee actually wasn’t all that destructive in the Ashes. There was theatre and tension every time he came onto bowl, but all that happened was that the batsman thought: “Ooh,

July 13, 2012 Match report

West Indies v New Zealand T20 International in Fort Lauderdale, Florida – match report

3 minute readDaneel writes: It’s a tough life being a cricket fan in the USA; no coverage on television and sometimes even TMS is blocked if the rights aren’t available over here. In desperation, I’ve had to resort to watching baseball. This wasn’t so bad when we were in Seattle. Although the

July 11, 2012 South Africa

How we’ll remember Mark Boucher

< 1 minute readWhen someone retires, people are generally supposed to focus on that person’s attributes and this has been particularly true for Mark Boucher after his career was ended by a horrendous incident where a bail cut his eyeball. However, here at King Cricket we don’t have all that much lyrical waxation

July 10, 2012 Australia

Remember that England team that couldn’t bat, bowl or field

< 1 minute readWell if this Australia one-day side could run between the wickets, they’d be almost that good. Batting We’ve just got back from the ground, we watched the entire match and we’ve still no idea who the batsmen are. Clarke and Hussey, we guess. There’s also George Bailey who seems to

July 10, 2012 Extras

Julius Caesar was a cricketer

< 1 minute readWhy does no-one tell us these things? That title should perhaps read ‘there was a cricketer called Julius Caesar’ but a little ambiguity never harmed anyone. Our Julius Caesar was a Surrey short-arse who was ‘a fine steady bat’ whose fielding at point was ‘extremely beautiful’. Apparently, he could also