King Cricket

October 10, 2011 India / Sri Lanka

Lasith Malinga leads the bowlers

< 1 minute readIt’s nice to see bowlers being decisive in a Twenty20 match. Far too often they might as well just glue different mugshots onto a bowling machine and use that instead. In the Champions League final, Mumbai successfully defended 139. For a large proportion of the match, the commentators were talking

October 9, 2011 India

Is Sachin Tendulkar preventing India from having fast bowlers?

< 1 minute readThis week, Zaheer Khan said: “Indian bodies are not designed to bowl fast.” Assuming that Zaheer has chosen his words carefully, this seems to indicate that he believes that humans are ‘designed’. If they are designed by God, and Sachin is God, then we can conclude that the Mumbai batsman’s

October 7, 2011 Extras

Runners-up in the Champions League T20

< 1 minute readIs there ambiguity or a double meaning in that title? Certainly the former, possibly the latter, depending how things go for Somerset tomorrow. We did a piece for Cricinfo, which, on the face of it, is about Somerset being in the Champions League despite being perennial runners-up. That sentence makes

October 5, 2011 India

Royal Challengers Bangalore hit a six off the final ball to win

< 1 minute readWe’ve seen a handful of games where one team needs a six off the final ball to win – it’s hard to beat. We’ll talk you through the climax of Bangalore’s win over South Australia in the Twenty20 Champions League: Some Aussie guy ran in and bowled and Bangalore’s wicketkeeper

October 5, 2011 County cricket / England

2011 County Championship players to watch review

2 minute readSuppose we should take a look at how our 2011 County Championship players to watch fared. Adam Lyth, Yorkshire 553 runs at 26.33 Yeah, that’s pretty shoddy. James Hildreth, Somerset 893 runs at 38.82 That’s okay. Ben Stokes, Durham 628 runs at 48.30 and 17 wickets at 33.00 Three hundreds,

October 4, 2011 Match report

Middlesex v Surrey Twenty20 match report

2 minute readGed writes: Ged Ladd & Co Ltd quietly works wonders for world cricket. People from all manner of countries where cricket is barely played (e.g. Bulgaria, Switzerland, Nigeria, Russia, Belgium, USA, Italy, China, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa) have been introduced to cricket through our company scratch matches and T20

October 3, 2011 County cricket / Regulars

A pigeon being conspicuously indifferent to Rob Key

< 1 minute readThe Dawg writes: I’m all for animals being conspicuously indifferent to cricket, but have you seen who is at the crease? This is taken from a Kent v Surrey T20 game at the Oval. That pigeon should show more respect. If you’ve got a picture of an animal being conspicously

September 30, 2011 England

Marketing England one-day matches in 2012

< 1 minute readThe marketing men and women have got a tough task on their hands trying to generate interest in England’s 13 one-day internationals and four Twenty20 internationals next summer. This is because: There are far, far, far too many matches No-one in England gives a toss about short-form cricket outside of

September 29, 2011 England

Are you convinced by Jade Dernbach and his variations?

2 minute readWe’re not making a point of criticising England’s newer bowlers. We’re just pointing out that we aren’t living in a bounteous land of champagne fountains and gold furniture. Players are being talked about as if they’re staggeringly gifted when they’re not. The English treat one-day cricket like some mystical oddity.

September 28, 2011 England

Stuart Meaker and England selection

< 1 minute readIn years gone by, you wouldn’t have trusted the England selectors to identify the best cricketer on an episode of A Question Of Sport, but this batch, led by Geoff Miller, has earned respect. Even so, it doesn’t pay to get too clever. Earlier this year, we said that Stuart