King Cricket

May 6, 2010 England

England’s Twenty20 batting line-up

< 1 minute readAn Englishman, an Irishman and a South African walk into a pub. “Aren’t you an England Twenty20 middle-order that inspires a surprising amount of confidence in supporters?” asks the barman. “No,” says the Englishman. “We’re three entirely different people who just happen to be of the same nationalities as the

May 6, 2010 Regulars

A fox being conspicuously partial to cricket

< 1 minute readD Charlton writes: This fox cub was not indifferent to cricket. In fact, he was the opposite: he was different to cricket. So different, in fact, that he wandered into these nets, got tangled up and trapped. Luckily, the cricket club were able to dig out Sussex CCC’s number, who

May 5, 2010 Extras

Duckworth-Lewis Method minimum over requirement

< 1 minute readFrank Duckworth says that if there is a problem with his and Detective Sergeant Lewis’s method of deciding rain-affected games, it is in the fact that the ICC deem five overs to be sufficient to constitute a match. We agree. If we could characterise a five-over minimum requirement as Naomi

May 4, 2010 England

England v maths

< 1 minute readMaths wins. You should never try and compete against maths. It’s unconquerable. Despite putting in one of their finest batting performances in either of the short formats, England were comprehensively beaten by maths. Maths unleashed its biggest and most destructive weaponry, the Duckworth-Lewis calculations, which cruelly shuffled figures about until

May 3, 2010 England / West Indies

Chris Gayle knows where England go wrong

< 1 minute readChris Gayle knows why England rarely perform well at these tournaments: “I’m sure they come out here with blood in their eyes.” That can’t help. Even if it doesn’t affect their vision too much, it’s got to be a bit unsettling.

May 2, 2010 India

Suresh Raina makes a good career move

< 1 minute readSuresh Raina hit the first Twenty20 international hundred for India. He’ll do well out of that, you’d think. We like Suresh Raina. We like the fact that he plays across the line into the off side. That seems to us to be the most effective way of making yourself look

April 30, 2010 England

The odds on England winning the World Twenty20

< 1 minute readWell, they’re not great, but that’s largely due to the fact that there are a whole bunch of teams in the tournament rather than because of any massive shortcomings on England’s part. If there were only one team in the tournament, England’s chances would be far better. If there were

April 29, 2010 County cricket

Sajid Mahmood actually takes five wickets

< 1 minute readDo you know how rare that is? Lots of smart-arse Mahmood critics will say that they do know, but that’s not really the point we’re making. Saj Mahmood has spent a good portion of his career bowling first-change for Lancashire. When there are good bowling conditions, he might pick up

April 28, 2010 County cricket

Back to England and back to county cricket

< 1 minute readHow come the rolling 24 hour news channels aren’t telling us everything Giles Clarke’s said in the last five minutes? How come Gordon Brown hasn’t stepped into the debate about possible restructuring of the county game? It’s a strange land we’ve returned to. Following the IPL, we’ve got the World

April 26, 2010 India / Match report

Mumbai Indians v Chennai Super Kings, IPL final match report

< 1 minute readAlex writes: I watched the pre-match sunglasses-fest/pose-athon while tucking into Kashmiri lamb shank rogan josh. Unfortunately, my reluctantly embraced ‘no beer’ policy meant I enjoyed the main event in my room, accompanied by a bottle of Bisleri bottled water. What I like to call “the IPL ad endurance challenge” really