King Cricket

December 23, 2008 Australia

Australia’s selection policy

2 minute readJust what do they think they’re doing? There was a sign that the wheels had come off when Ricky Ponting said: “We’ve really got to pick horses for courses with our selections,” when the Australians were in India. Selection is one of the Aussies’ greatest strengths. Historically, they’ve actually planned

December 22, 2008 South Africa

AB de Villiers follows Graeme Smith

2 minute readSouth Africa could never have chased down 414 without a hundred from Graeme Smith. After he was out for 108, they couldn’t have won without a hundred from AB de Villiers. What’s really impressed us about this South African win is not that they chased down such a huge total

December 21, 2008 England / India

Kevin Pietersen’s switch hit

< 1 minute readWe’d bet that there aren’t many reading this site, but there are nevertheless a great number of people out there who’d brand Kevin Pietersen’s switch hitting ‘irresponsible’. It really isn’t. He doesn’t just do it on a whim. He decided it was a good way of scoring runs with a

December 20, 2008 New Zealand / West Indies

Shivnarine Chanderpaul bats and bats and bats

< 1 minute readBat and bat and bat. That was Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s advice to Jerome Taylor last week when the latter got a hundred. Shiv followed his own advice against New Zealand yesterday. He made 126. He was not out, obviously, because that’s the way Shiv rolls. Not that Shiv could ever roll.

December 20, 2008 England / India

Gautam Gambhir’s worth getting out

< 1 minute readSome said that England were unlucky in the first Test that three great batsmen – Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar and Yuvraj Singh – all fired at the same time. It wasn’t bad luck. Those batsmen fire as often as they don’t and even if they don’t fire then Rahul Dravid

December 19, 2008 Regulars

Ian Bell attempts to grow a beard

< 1 minute readSam writes: “Here is a picture of Ian Bell attempting to grow a little beard. “Look at the concentration on his face. It’s dedication like this that shows just how far English cricket has come.” We asked Sam if he had a beard. Sam never got back to us about

December 18, 2008 Australia / South Africa

Mitchell Johnson – Australia fast bowler

< 1 minute readPerhaps the most striking thing about Mitchell Johnson is his ridiculous cartoon character tufty hair. After that it’s his bowling. We watched quite a bit of Johnson when Australia toured India. He was their best bowler. For all the talk about Brett Lee being the fast strike bowler, Johnson’s not

December 18, 2008 West Indies

Sir Allen Stanford disbands his ‘legends’

< 1 minute readIn more brand ambassador news, Sir Allen Stanford has done away with his team of ‘legends’ that he used to promote his shamtastic cricket event. A spokesperson said: “He has disbanded the legends group, but at this stage no decision has been taken on the future of the Super Series.”

December 17, 2008 Australia

Test average maintenance

< 1 minute readMatthew Hayden 12, Ricky Ponting 0, Mike Hussey 0. Bring ’em down. Bring ’em down to a sensible level. Those three think they’re so good. They think they can bat in any conditions against any bowler. They think they’re ‘all that’, but they’re not ‘all that’. They are, at most,

December 17, 2008 England

Something about Vodafone and England

< 1 minute readWe’re not interested in sponsorship really. However, we do hate people with corporate titles and we outright loathe meaningless PR speak, so we did actually make the effort to read the news about Vodafone not sponsoring England any more. We also hate Vodafone because they have ‘-fone’ in their name,