King Cricket

May 17, 2008 England / New Zealand

Bad light stopped play

< 1 minute readIt’s not often we agree with Mark Nicholas, if only because we don’t float through life spouting words like ‘divine’ and ‘exquisite’ every second sentence, but we think he had a point this one time he was commentating over Channel 5 highlights of cricketers walking on and off the field.

May 16, 2008 England / New Zealand

Brendon McCullum uses his feet

2 minute readBrendon McCullum recently found his feet. Now he’s putting them to good use. If you’ve read the page we just linked to, this might sound kind of familiar. This is the Test version of that post. Brendon McCullum’s had 52 Test innings. In his first 45, he managed two hundreds

May 15, 2008 England

England’s brilliant white kit

< 1 minute readA lot of people are asking whether England’s new Test kit is the whitest ever seen on a cricket field. It isn’t. That honour goes to the outfit worn by Algernon Denby-Farthing in a match for Yorkshire against Kent in 1885. Denby-Farthing was obsessive about the cleanliness of his whites,

May 15, 2008 England / New Zealand

Cricket lunch

< 1 minute readWe pretty much know the teams. We pretty much know the tactics. What we don’t know is what the two teams will be feasting on during the first lunch break and who will fare the better. It’s common cricketing courtesy to clap the players when they emerge for the afternoon

May 14, 2008 Match report

Essex v Middlesex County Championship match report

2 minute readMatch reports are still welcome. Keep them fairly short and remember, don’t mention the actual cricket. 668, Neighbour of the Beast writes: With weather set on sunny we set off for Essex with the hope of catching up with a few sub-Saharan migrants, chirping and exhibiting the usual seasonal territoriality.

May 13, 2008 India

Chennai Super Kings – what is a Super King?

< 1 minute readYes, it’s just what you think. As it says on the Chennai Super Kings website: “[Super] enhances the qualities of the word it is prefixed to. Super Kings then is not just about royalty, but about absolute monarchy.” So there you go. Absolute monarchy. That’s what it’s all about. A

May 12, 2008 County cricket

Simon Jones and his injuries

2 minute readAndrew Flintoff is injured again. If only there were another English fast-bowling hope we could all idiotically and unreasonably crush with our mindless, unjustified hope. Step forward Simon Jones. Step forward carefully though. Don’t want you twisting an ankle or rupturing your pancreas or something. Simon Jones took 5-32 yesterday

May 11, 2008 England

Matthew Hoggard hatches fiendish plot to get back into the England team

< 1 minute readHe’s going to distract one of the Test team while they’re driving, causing them to have a car accident. “I need to keep knocking on the door because they’re in the driving seat at the moment.” We never thought he’d stoop so low.

May 10, 2008 County cricket / England

Andrew Flintoff bowling like a beast

< 1 minute readNot a cow or an ocelot or a langur monkey, but some sort of robotic beast specifically created to fire out intimidating back-of-a-length bowling. Paul Horton’s hundred looks even better after Durham were bowled out for 90. James Anderson took most of the wickets, but according to Lancashire’s captain, Stuart

May 9, 2008 County cricket

Paul Horton scores while bigger names don’t

< 1 minute readLancashire 143 (thanks to Mark Davies), Durham 114 (thanks to James Anderson and Andrew Flintoff), Lancashire 293 and Durham 28-3 (Flintoff again). As it stands, that 293 looks out of place. What happened? It was Paul Horton, Lancashire’s opener. No-one else in the match has passed 40. Horton made 108