King Cricket

April 16, 2008 India

Choose your IPL team

< 1 minute readWe nearly went for Bangalore Royal Challengers, because they’ve got Rahul Dravid, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Misbah-ul-Haq and Dale Steyn. We nearly went for Deccan Chargers, because they’ve got VVS Laxman, Herschelle Gibbs, Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds and Shahid Afridi. We’re not a massive fan of several of those players, but the

April 15, 2008 County cricket / Regulars

Liam Plunkett wrestles with his conscience

< 1 minute readOnly his angelic side and his demonic side are BOTH cyclopic yellow bears. “Go and buy some honey, Liam.” “Don’t listen to him! Go and steal some honey.”

April 14, 2008 County cricket

Rob Key and Joe Denly POWER UP

< 1 minute readRob Key’s Special Powers are already being passed on to Joe Denly. Kent’s opening pair started the season with a hundred apiece and an opening stand of 225. POWER UP! Whatever Leeds-Bradford UCCE threw at them, Key and Denly countered it with disdain. Harry Gurney: Countered with disdain! Richard Browning:

April 14, 2008 Bangladesh / Pakistan

Shakib al Hasan spanks runs

< 1 minute readYes, Bangladesh lost again, but Shakib al Hasan had an all-round good game and that warrants coverage. He took 2-50 as Pakistan pummelled their way to 308 and then he hit 75 off 73 balls. Shakib now averages 32 with the bat in one-day internationals and 33 with the ball.

April 13, 2008 India / South Africa

Opening the bowling with a spinner

< 1 minute readIndia is the home of spin bowling, so we always want to see EXTREME TRIAL BY SPIN whenever there’s a Test over there. There’s some batsman who’s supposed to be good against spin bowling. Yeah? How will he fare in an EXTREME TRIAL BY SPIN? Harbhajan Singh opened the bowling

April 12, 2008 Extras

The eleventh most influential sports blog in Britain

< 1 minute readThat’s us. Apart from the top ten, we’re first! We were going to change the title of the site to ‘King Cricket – eleventh most influential sports blog in Britain’, but what if we go up a place or so? When do you cross the line from self-deprecating joke to

April 11, 2008 England

England’s Twenty20 World Cup venues

< 1 minute readLord’s and The Oval were the first two confirmed venues for the Twenty20 World Cup in 2009. With two London grounds being used, it gives everyone in the capital the best possible chance of seeing a match. If they’d have only had the one venue inside the M25, it would

April 11, 2008 England

Owais Shah is a class above

< 1 minute readOkay, so maybe he is really irritating if you have to share a dressing room with him. We don’t know. We don’t care. He’s a fantastically accomplished batsman. In the Sussex v MCC – and you have to call it this – ‘county cricket curtain raiser’, 17 batsmen have now

April 11, 2008 Sri Lanka / West Indies

Shivnarine Chanderpaul hits a last ball six to win

< 1 minute readThis was the perfect example of how great batsmen play the situation. Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s an obdurate Test batsman. He hangs around for hours. In one-day cricket, he’s a different beast. He’s A BEAST OF WRATH. Controlled wrath, but wrath nonetheless. The West Indies needed ten to win off the last

April 10, 2008 Extras

Blog of the month

< 1 minute readWe’re blog of the month at Simply Cricket. This comes hot on the heels of being The Wisden Cricketer’s Best Of Blogs for April. We haven’t had so much recognition since we were in India and everyone thought we were Nasser Hussain. This recent recognition is hopefully more justified, if