King Cricket

March 18, 2009 New Zealand

Jesse Ryder’s first Test hundred

< 1 minute readNew Zealand’s third wicket fell. Jesse Ryder picked up his bat, lay down on the outfield and commanded his team mates: “Roll me out there. I’ve got a job to do.” Without having had inadequate preparation for once, Ryder was primed for action. He brushed the chocolate digestive crumbs off

March 18, 2009 Australia / England

Promising English fast bowlers like Sajid Mahmood

2 minute readEngland are generally impatient with promising young players. They bring them in, everyone who can voice an opinion takes it in turns to daub them in excrement and then it takes six years for the smell to wear off. Let’s make a comparison. Sajid Mahmood and Mitchell Johnson were born

March 17, 2009 England

Steven Davies is a wicketkeeper and he WILL open the batting

< 1 minute readAlthough we made Steven Davies one to watch at the start of last summer, we had it in mind that we’d be watching him for a bit longer before he appeared in international matches. Andy Flower said this week that if Davies plays in the one-day matches, he’ll open the

March 17, 2009 Uncategorised

A cricket bat at Rumtek monastery

< 1 minute readGed writes: The attached photograph is a monk at the Rumtek monastery in Sikkim brandishing a cricket bat. It is my own photo and the monk enthusiastically volunteered to be photographed. Rumtek monastery is a very holy and unusual place. The monks are black hats, which is an unusual strand

March 16, 2009 West Indies

West Indies’ one-day kit

< 1 minute read“Let’s make the shirt maroon and then match that with scarlet trousers and hats, because maroon and scarlet are complementary colours. “Let’s put some yellow bits here, there and everywhere and then let’s make the collar, ooh, let’s say bright green. “Finally, as the piece de resistance, let’s put a

March 15, 2009 England / New Zealand

Steve Harmison has one day to bowl his way back

2 minute readIf there’s one thing England need more than anything else, it’s a fast bowler. If there’s one thing Steve Harmison isn’t at the moment, it’s a fast bowler. The good news for Harmison is that nobody else is either, so all he really needs to address is that ‘at the

March 13, 2009 Uncategorised

A cricket bat on the cover of Vogue

< 1 minute readWarning: The following does feature a photograph of an actual woman. Ankit says: The attached picture is of Preity Zinta, a Bollywood starlet, with a cricket bat, on the cover of Vogue! I thought that was quite an unusual place for a cricket bat to be. Send your pictures of

March 12, 2009 England

What is genuine pace?

< 1 minute readIn cricket, ‘genuine pace’ is usually 90mph (144kph) plus. If a bowler has ‘genuine pace’, it means he bowls quickly, even though the words themselves don’t really mean that. We’ve all got to stop talking about ‘genuine pace’. 36mph is a genuine pace, after all. What pace isn’t genuine? One

March 12, 2009 Match report

West Indies v England, Barbados match report

2 minute readBenno writes: Really it all started the night before in Harbour Lights in Bridgetown where we took full advantage of the ‘drink all the sickly rum punch you can for 50 bajan dollars’ offer and invented a game called musical table dancing. My mate, Pikey, tried to rip out his

March 11, 2009 England / New Zealand

James Anderson bowls reverse swing

< 1 minute readIf you’ve only seen the scorecard, you might not believe us on this one, but James Anderson bowled brilliantly in this match – particularly when you consider that he was suffering from the wild shits for the whole of one day’s play. He’s bowled well all series, in fact, in