King Cricket

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

March 31, 2008 County cricket

Cricketers to watch in 2008

< 1 minute readIt’s pretty much April and there aren’t many fixtures this week, so let’s get on with this season’s Ones To Watch. As usual, names will appear below as more are added throughout the week. We’ll give a little away by telling you who’s not appearing though. Mark Davies isn’t appearing,

March 29, 2008 India / South Africa

Rahul Dravid: best bridesmaid ever

< 1 minute readRahul Dravid hit his 10,000th Test run today en route to his 25th Test hundred. It’s a little bit overshadowed by Sehwag’s triple hundred, but that’s pretty much the way it goes for Dravid. Dravid was very much the support act for Sehwag yesterday, hitting 68 in a partnership worth

March 28, 2008 India / South Africa

Virender Sehwag hits fastest 300

< 1 minute readVirender Sehwag has now hit the fastest Test triple hundred. He was always likely to achieve it, which is perhaps the biggest compliment of all. A freak innings like Nathan Astle’s is one thing, but Sehwag does this kind of thing consistently. At the close of play Virender Sehwag was

March 28, 2008 India / South Africa

Virender Sehwag hits tenth successive hundred in excess of 150

2 minute readThat’s not a particularly arresting statistic on first glance, but think about it. When Virender Sehwag passes 100 he almost always hits in excess of 150. That’s something. A running theme of this site of late has been the importance of imposing yourself on the opposition. We alluded to it

March 28, 2008 Australia / County cricket / Pakistan

Hampshire lose Warne while Sussex keep Mushtaq

< 1 minute readWell that’s made the County Championship a damn sight easier to predict. Mushtaq Ahmed has played more of a part in deciding the competition than any other single player in recent years. He’s being allowed to play for Sussex despite competing in the naughty Twenty20 league, the ICL. He’ll be