King Cricket

April 4, 2008 India / South Africa

A B de Villiers reckons batting isn’t so hard on this pitch after all

< 1 minute readVehement letter C denier, A B de Villiers, is currently 217 not out, which knocks India’s 76 all out into a cocked hat. A B de Villiers is young and richly talented. Let’s invite him round for tea but then pretend that we all thought he was a vegan. Then,

April 4, 2008 Sri Lanka / West Indies

Typical Fidel Edwards

< 1 minute readBurns in, takes 3-18, tricks you into thinking he’s finally arrived as a fast bowler, then takes 0-32 in his next spell and finally ends up with those same three wickets for about 120. Stupid, round-armed short-arse. Tillakaratne Dilshan’s saving Sri Lanka with 58 not out off 57 balls. We

April 3, 2008 County cricket / England

Steven Finn, Middlesex

< 1 minute readJames Harris is the cool England Under-19 opening bowler at the minute, on account of making a great start to his first-class career at the age of just 17. But here at King Cricket, we’re anything but cool, so we’re going for the other England Under-19 opening bowler, Steven Finn.

April 3, 2008 India / South Africa

India’s seventh lowest total in Test cricket

2 minute readAll out for 76 in the morning session of day one. Eye-catchingly disgraceful. At just 120 deliveries, this was also the 12th shortest innings in terms of balls faced for any side in Test history. In recent times, only England’s 46 all out against the Windies at Port of Spain

April 2, 2008 County cricket

Steven Davies, Worcestershire

< 1 minute readPlease let Steven Davies be the end to the to-ing and fro-ing of England wicketkeepers. At 21, he’s got years on most of his rivals and he’s virtually matching all of them for runs and wickets. If he can improve and stand head and shoulders above everyone as the standout

April 2, 2008 Pakistan

Shoaib Akhtar “banned” again

2 minute readThe hyper-extensible elbows, double joints, injuries and banned substance-taking couldn’t stop Shoaib Akhtar. Unfortunately, the one thing he’s never been able to protect himself against is his own idiocy. Shoaib misses matches for a million reasons, the million-and-first reason, his mouth, is the biggest problem. If only someone could have

April 1, 2008 County cricket / England

Liam Plunkett, Durham

< 1 minute readWe think Liam Plunkett’s still worth watching. He’s 23 this week. It’s a little bit early to be discarding him. Ordinarily a promising young English seam bowler could expect to spend the winter with what was the England A team and is now the England Lions. Plunkett did so, but

April 1, 2008 Australia / England

Using the cricket blogging technology

< 1 minute readNot us, obviously. Our luddism is far too deeply-ingrained. Other people. Uncle J Rod has embraced the podcast. Actually, being as it’s J Rod, he’s more molested the podcast and stuck his tongue down its ear. They appear weekly and most surprisingly, he sounds like an Australian in them. We

March 31, 2008 County cricket

Joe Denly, Kent

< 1 minute readJoe Denly or James Hildreth? Joe Denly or James Hildreth? Joe Denly’s nickname is ‘No Pants’. Decision made. Plus Joe Denly gets to open the batting with Rob Key. Spend any amount of time in Rob’s vicinity and a little bit of genius is bound to rub off. We managed

March 31, 2008 County cricket

Rikki Clarke, Derbyshire

< 1 minute readDon’t laugh. We’ll admit it is a bit counter-intuitive, but we’re intrigued. Rikki Clarke was picked for England at a young age and while he didn’t disgrace himself, his bowling clearly wasn’t international standard, so he’s something of a figure of fun. Last year, both his batting and bowling aspired