King Cricket

December 13, 2008 England / India

Andrew Strauss and Paul Collingwood in partnership

< 1 minute readIt doesn’t make the heart race, but it is brilliant. Andrew Strauss now averages 61.85 in Tests in India. Paul Collingwood averages 68.20. Kevin Pietersen averages 27.62. Sometimes you need to clog your way to success and Strauss and Collingwood can bunt singles with the best of them. Strauss has

December 12, 2008 New Zealand

Tim McIntosh summons the spirit of Mark Richardson

< 1 minute readIt strikes us that New Zealand are a side who can benefit from a good old-fashioned batting line-up with a trio of blockers at the top of the order followed by the strokemakers. Kiwi batsmen do tend to be one or the other and an early stultathon will set the

December 11, 2008 England / India

Zaheer Khan – average record belies his class

< 1 minute readZaheer Khan deserves better than 2-36 and we won’t begrudge him if he gets more wickets. There are talented bowlers out there who have unflattering career records and Zaheer’s one of them. It seems wrong to watch a bowler unveil such a range of skills and then see that he’s

December 11, 2008 England

Graham or Graeme Swann?

< 1 minute readGraeme Swann’s selection for England has opened up an old, rancid can of worms. Worms of spelling. Spelling worms. To rid the world of these vile spelling worms once and for all, Graeme Swann is a Graeme, not a Graham. Here are some more famous cricketing Grahams/Graemes: Graham Gooch Graeme

December 10, 2008 Australia

Disturbingly smooth men of cricket

< 1 minute readJust when you think you can’t possibly vomit any more, you remember that the year doesn’t end with January. Witness the Men Of Cricket 2009 calendar, made to raise funds for the McGrath Foundation, an organisation set up by Glenn and his late wife to provide funding for breast cancer

December 9, 2008 County cricket

Chris Lewis forgets to discard his 4kg of cocaine before boarding the aircraft

< 1 minute readChris Lewis may or may not have said: “4kg of cocaine? They told me it was a sandwich and a banana for the flight.” Actually, they told him it was a load of tinned fruit. Or maybe they told him it was 4kg of cocaine disguised as tinned fruit. The

December 9, 2008 New Zealand

Chris Martin – not the best bowler in New Zealand

< 1 minute readThe angular-elbowed, overly springy-running, Kiwi namesake of Dorset-raised, middle-class Coldplay singer, Chris Martin, has been dropped by New Zealand. What do you make of this? (Assuming you can work out what ‘this’ is from that sentence.) We partly think ‘who for?’ being as New Zealand don’t exactly have heaps of

December 8, 2008 County cricket

Never mention Harry Potter when attempting a joke

< 1 minute readWe got a text message yesterday. It said: “Giles Coren has written a shit piece in The Times about Wisden being owned by a new publisher. It’s really, really awful.” We had to take a look and it doesn’t disappoint. As you perhaps know, The Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack has been

December 7, 2008 England

Amjad Khan of Kent, Denmark and now England

< 1 minute readThere haven’t been a great many Danish cricketers. We’re not sure Amjad Khan’s exactly a great – but by Danish standards he can’t be far off. Amjad Khan’s what we’d deem a solid practitioner, which smacks of faint praise, but isn’t meant to. It’s actually more an acknowledgement that England

December 5, 2008 England / India / Pakistan

Safety concerns when touring India or Pakistan

2 minute readWe didn’t want to say anything on this subject, because we feel fairly certain it will show up our ignorance and that’s something we can comfortably highlight without remotely stretching ourself. This issue is monopolising the cricket news though, so it deserves comment. Feel free to put us straight on