King Cricket

March 18, 2008 Extras

We’re in The Wisden Cricketer!

2 minute readThe Wisden Cricketer’s a proper, grown-up publication. Look, it’s actually tangible! Here’s the bit where it says that it’s “the world’s no.1 cricket magazine”. And here’s us! No, really. Look! And here’s Monty being conspicuously indifferent to it. Turning away OR closing your eyes would have been sufficient, young man.

March 17, 2008 County cricket

Chris Lewis signs for Surrey

< 1 minute readChris ‘shaved head, no hat’ Lewis has signed for Surrey for this season’s Twenty20 matches. He’s 40. Younger readers might like to think of Lewis as being a sort of role model for the current West Indian team. He was born in Guyana, but it’s not that. With the ball,

March 17, 2008 England / New Zealand

Ryan Sidebottom does the necessary

2 minute readWe said after the last Test that you need spectacular performances to win Tests and you also need them to give you some breathing room in case of a bad day. England got away with one day of buttery fingers thanks to Tim Ambrose’s hundred and James Anderson’s five wickets.

March 15, 2008 England / New Zealand

Anderson knacks his ankle

2 minute readYes, ‘knacks’. We’re not the BBC here, you know. We don’t have to use proper Standard English words, like ‘knackers’. Actually, we do like to use the word ‘knackers’, but only as a noun. For the verb, we favour ‘to knack’. It was one of those days where you’re waiting

March 14, 2008 England / New Zealand

James Anderson’s back

2 minute readAs in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. To think it’s been almost a year since we last made that joke. How time flies. James Anderson has a bit of a reputation for – and you have to use these exact words – ‘spraying it around’. While this

March 13, 2008 England / New Zealand

Tim Ambrose makes himself at home

< 1 minute readJonathan Agnew wrote today: “Tim Ambrose might be one of the shortest men currently playing Test cricket, but this man can bat.” We’d go further than that. We’d say, ‘Tim Ambrose might have attended Merewether Selective High, but he managed to hit two sixes’. We like a good non-sequitur. Before

March 12, 2008 England

Steve Harmison dropped

2 minute readThe graph doesn’t lie. Steve Harmison’s performances have been deteriorating for ages now. There wasn’t going to be an upturn. Last week Allan Donald revealed that Harmison had been scared while playing for England. There have been a lot of similar stories over the last year or so and they

March 12, 2008 England

Matthew Hoggard dropped

2 minute readThis is a bit of a weird one. What do you make of this? In a climate where senior players are being unjustifiably indulged, Matthew Hoggard’s had a bad game and he’s out on his ear. The long, slow descent towards Harmison’s dropping now seems unnecessarily cruel in its inevitability,

March 11, 2008 County cricket / India

Dimitri Mascarenhas signs for IPL’s Jaipur franchise

< 1 minute readDimi is quoted as saying: “I only hope that people will look back in 20 or 30 years time and say that I gave everything for a franchise I’ve supported since I was a boy.” He didn’t really say that. But someone might before too long, because people are, on

March 11, 2008 India

Kolkata name their IPL team

< 1 minute readThey’re going to be the Kolkata Knight Riders. Brilliantly, this isn’t even a joke. Writing this site gets easier by the day. This time next week, we fully expect Sohail Tanvir to change his name to Optimus Prime. But the Knight Riders aren’t the best-monikered IPL outfit. That honour has