King Cricket

February 8, 2008 Australia / Sri Lanka

Nathan Bracken bowling people out despite his flaw

< 1 minute readSickeningly wrong-handed purveyor of off-cutters, Nathan Bracken, has once again ended a one-day international with disgustingly flattering figures. Bracken took 5-46 as Sri Lanka were bowled out for just 125, chasing Australia’s 253. We’ve long since accepted that Nathan Bracken is a more-than-useful one-day bowler, but we don’t have to

February 7, 2008 England / New Zealand

Twenty20 takes 22 players

< 1 minute readWe really like Twenty20, but it can be difficult to report on. It’s more difficult to identify that one, stand-out performance from a player. Twenty20’s more of a team game than you might think. With only 20 overs, it makes sense that one big innings from a batsman decides the

February 6, 2008 Regulars

England adopt subtle form of mental disintegration

< 1 minute readSo-called mental disintegration can take many forms. You might play on a batsman’s confidence or you might try and aggravate him into losing his cool. In this picture, Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell and Ryan Sidebottom have teamed up in an effort to make Ross Taylor jealous. Ross Taylor considers himself

February 5, 2008 England / New Zealand

Dimitri Mascarenhas is handy down the order

< 1 minute readEngland don’t often find batsman who are pretty good. They have good and great batsmen at the top of the order and they have rubbish and not awful batsmen down the order, but there always seems to be a number eight-shaped hole in the batting card. In one-day cricket at

February 5, 2008 England / New Zealand

England v New Zealand – masterful cricket scheduling

< 1 minute readGreat news for fans of England v New Zealand matches – today’s Twenty20 match was the first of 19 consecutive international fixtures between the two sides. Surely what everyone’s hoping is that one team gets on top early on and shows itself to be vastly superior to the other team.

February 4, 2008 England

Alastair Cook in one-day cricket

2 minute readAlastair Cook hit a hundred in England’s latest warm-up. The bowlers he had to face might not have been the world’s finest, but he hit 138 not out off 140 balls and every time he does that he’ll be getting a little bit more comfortable with one-day cricket. There are

February 1, 2008 Australia / India

India, world Twenty20 champions, bat like pillocks

< 1 minute readWe’ve no problem branding professional cricketers as ‘pillocks’. That’s the kind of fearless reportage you get here at King Cricket. We’re not afraid to bandy strong words around. We’re not afraid to bandy anything, because we’re not totally sure what bandying entails. Irfan Pathan was the sole Indian batsman to

February 1, 2008 Regulars

Somerset adopt undersized helmets made out of fruit

< 1 minute readBang it in short.

January 31, 2008 England

England Lions: five for Panesar, Flintoff to appear at boundary edge

< 1 minute readFive wickets for Monty Panesar – there’s a sentence that’s been conspicuous by its absence of late. He only did it for England Lions though, who we’re going to start calling England Second XI, because that’s much more accurate. If you’re going to name one of your national teams after

January 29, 2008 Australia

No bowling for Shaun Tait for a bit

< 1 minute readThis is bad news. We’d already earmarked Shaun Tait as Matthew Hayden’s successor in the role of ‘most detestably arrogant Australian’. With his face, his face and also his face, he had all the attributes to make the position his own for years to come. But he’s disappointingly fragile. He’s