World Cup Semi-Final: England v South Africa top order partnership rankings

2 minute read

You do wonder why England didn’t stick with the ‘bowling South Africa out for 69’ ploy that had served them so well in the group stages. Quite possibly, they tried, but for some reason Laura Wolvaardt wasn’t inclined to go along with it this time.

For a sense of how the England v South Africa semi-final played out, you could do worse than look at the top order partnerships for the two teams.

Tell you what, we’ll rank them for you, from smallest to largest:

• 0 runs: Tammy Beaumont and Amy Jones (England)
• 0 runs: Tammy Beaumont and Heather Knight (England)
• 0 runs: Laura Wolvaardt and Anneke Bosch (South Africa)
• 1 run (a wide): Tammy Beaumont and Nat Sciver-Brunt (England)
• 3 runs: Laura Wolvaardt and Suné Luus (South Africa)
• 116 runs: Laura Wolvaardt and Tazmin Brits (South Africa)

Wolvaardt just went on and on from there. For a brief moment it seemed possible that as well as scoring more than half her team’s runs, she might also account for more than half the runs in the entire match.

England fought back a bit, but only really in that rather pointless ‘making a knock-out defeat a bit less embarrassing’ kind of way.

Their middle-order hasn’t really made any runs this tournament, so significantly lengthening its odds of success with the sizeable target Wolvaardt had set, and by then falling to 1-3 didn’t especially help its cause.

Charlotte Edwards’ post-match/tournament assessment was one of those quietly sweeping indictments where it slowly dawns on you that she’s not happy about very much at all really.

“Our batting has to improve – certainly that middle order and playing against spin; certainly slow spin – and obviously bowling across all phases.”

At least she didn’t mention the fielding. We don’t believe they dropped Wolvaardt until she had 128, so we guess that’s progress.

You can of course read our writing without spending £19 on a big slab of paper. Sign up for our email!

The post World Cup Semi-Final: England v South Africa top order partnership rankings first appeared on King Cricket.

Related posts:

1. South Africa choke in 1999 World Cup semi final against Australia
2. Who will lose to Australia in the World Cup final?
3. Did South Africa choke in a semi final again?

from King Cricket https://ift.tt/mGkq5SM

OUT NOW: The Merseyside Cricket Online Story of 2025

Here is how you can get your digital hands on a 40-page ebook celebrating a historic summer of cricket.

The Merseyside Cricket Online Story of 2025 features highlights from Merseyside Cricket Online’s coverage of the season’s biggest moments – including Ormskirk’s win at Lord’s and the all-Comp Lancashire Cup final.

It also features full results from all three 1st XI divisions – and My 2025, a new and exclusive series of articles featuring a handful of the people who make local cricket tick.

To get yours, click here!

from Merseyside Cricket Online https://ift.tt/DcBNHUm

51. Michael Vaughan Declines A Crushing

6 minute read

aka The Vaughan Supremacy

As we’ve already told you (multiple times) we’ve got a book out, co-written with Dan Liebke: The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments. In it, we count down exactly what that title promises. But of course there have been far more than 50 ridiculous moments in the last five decades of Ashes cricket, so we’ve also published a bit of the overspill by way of promoting the thing. Dan previously ran the 52nd most ridiculous Ashes moment – Mark Waugh replacing Steve Waugh – over on his site and below we bring you the 51st most ridiculous moment: Michael Vaughan declining a crushing. These two chapters aren’t in the book, but they should give you a pretty good feel for its contents nonetheless. Please buy The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments! Stocks are (genuinely) limited, so no time like the present! Ideal Christmas present etc etc.

England were crushed in the 2002/03 Ashes. This wasn’t a colossal surprise for three key reasons.

1. Crush-happy Steve Waugh was leading an Australia side that was near enough at its peak (and to be honest was still pretty handy even at its nadir)
2. England were England
3. England were England in Australia

The margins of victory across the first four Tests were 384 runs, an innings and 51 runs, an innings and 48 runs and five wickets. A Warne-and-McGrath-less XI then suffered an unlikely dead rubber defeat in the fifth Test. 

Warne had dislocated his shoulder for that last match. Never one to offer the opposition much encouragement, Waugh said of his replacement, Stuart MacGill: “I have gone on record that he’s in the top couple of spinners in the world.” 

McGrath, meanwhile, had, “suffered a left side strain to his ‘grunt’ muscle,” according to team physio Errol Alcott, who was clearly not averse to blinding his audience with science.

Notable absentees aside, that fifth Test victory was to a great extent down to the efforts of the one England player to emerge from the series uncrushed: a young, upright opener called Michael Vaughan, who had begun his year ranked 40th in the world behind Ridley Jacobs and Neil McKenzie, but who would subsequently rise to number one, ahead of Matthew Hayden and Sachin Tendulkar, a month or two after the series had finished.

None of England’s other batters fared well. And nor did their bowlers.

Over the course of the series, all of England’s other players combined managed just one hundred: Mark Butcher’s 124 in that fifth Test. Australia’s batters managed eight – despite getting two fewer innings.

Warne, McGrath and Jason Gillespie all averaged under 25 with the ball (as did Waugh and Damien Martyn¹, if you include part-timers – which for the purposes of the point being made here, we may as well.) No England bowler averaged less than 30. The pick of them was Ashley Giles, who managed 31.83 after taking 6-191 in the only Test he played.

At the other end of the scale, Steve Harmison averaged 50, Matthew Hoggard 60, Alex Tudor 70 (from one Test) and Richard Dawson almost 80 (rather more damningly, from four Tests). 

Say what you like about Gilo, but we all know that successful Ashes tours to Australia are not on The King of Spain’s bowling built.

Michael Vaughan, however, seemed blissfully unaware of all this. As his teammates were being compressed all around him, the oblivious Yorkshireman hit three hundreds and averaged 63.30.

Vaughan’s upturn in output that year was vertiginous, but his capacity to play like someone airlifted in from an entirely different cricket team had already been noted. That quality was, in fact, the chief reason he’d managed to retain his place in the side even without any properly big scores.

The first time he’d walked out to bat for England in a Test match, they’d been 2-2 against South Africa, and by the time he actually faced his first ball, they were 2-4². Batting initially with another debutant, Chris Adams, Vaughan saved his team from complete ignominy with one of the more sizeable 33s³, given the context.  

Two and a half years and 16 Test matches later, however, his record was the definition of mediocrity: just one hundred and an average of 31.15. This wasn’t good enough, so in April 2002 he resolved to instantly and completely master Test match batting. 

In his next Test, against Sri Lanka at Lord’s, he top-scored in both innings. His first innings 64 wasn’t enough to save the follow-on, so he made 115 in the second to secure the draw. 

Against India, later in the summer, he hit three hundreds in four Tests – a second of the summer at Lord’s, 197 at Trent Bridge and 195 at the Oval. He scored 615 runs in the series – 300 more than England’s second highest scorer, Nasser Hussain – and averaged 102.50. To further contextualise those efforts, England could still only draw the series 1-1. 

Then he had knee surgery. 

Then it was time to go to Australia.

The first Test in Brisbane was famously no contest at all after Hussain won the toss and elected to bowl (see chapter [redacted]). Vaughan was twice dismissed by McGrath, including a first ball lbw in the second innings. Further burnishing his credentials as a textbook England Ashes tourist, he also dropped two catches.

Ahead of the second Test in Adelaide, Vaughan twisted his knee in the warm-up which meant that Hussain apparently walked out to the toss not knowing whether he would even be fit to play or not.

Hussain called correctly and – not entirely surprisingly – decided he’d have a bat this time. It turned out Vaughan was fit to play. And play he did. He was dismissed in the final over of the day for 177.

Vaughan’s first boundary in that innings was a pull shot off Andy Bichel that went for six. The delivery didn’t seem quite short enough to warrant the shot, but he got away with it. He then carried on getting away with similar shots for the whole of the rest of the series, narrowing the ‘good length’ band of pitch – within which balls are considered too short to drive but too full to pull – to barely a sliver.

No side had lost a Test at Adelaide batting first since 1966 – but this England side was made of different stuff. The other 10 batters combined couldn’t quite match Vaughan in the first innings and contributed just 150 runs between them. Australia countered with 552-9 and then bowled the tourists out for 159 (of which Vaughan made 41).

A week later, Australia retained the Ashes with another innings victory in Perth. Vaughan’s significant contributions included running out partner Mark Butcher in the first innings before falling victim to Butcher returning the favour in the second.

Shortly after, it was revealed that as well as his dodgy knee, Vaughan had been playing with a fractured shoulder sustained when he was hit by a Jason Gillespie delivery during his second Test hundred.

“It hasn’t stopped me playing and it hasn’t stopped me doing anything so I don’t perceive it to be any sort of problem,” he said.

It certainly didn’t stop him scoring massive hundreds. In Melbourne, he made 145 out of England’s second innings 387, as the tourists succumbed to a five-wicket defeat. If progress can be measured by the day on which a team loses, on this occasion the tourists could at least celebrate surviving to day five.

But then came the victory in Sydney. A duck in the fourth over of the match didn’t seem to foreshadow such a thing, but then lo! What was this? An England player who was not Michael Vaughan seeing fit to contribute? 

Butcher’s 124 wasn’t quite enough to prevent Australia taking a colossal one-run first innings lead, thanks to Steve Waugh’s century off the final ball of day two (see chapter [redacted]). But Vaughan still had an innings to play. He used it to make 183, which meant that even though Hussain was the only other batter to pass 40, Australia now faced a towering fourth innings target of 452. 

Despite a half-hearted, and swiftly aborted, reversal of the batting order that saw Bichel come in at three, they fell 225 runs short, with Andy Caddick taking 7-94. Could there be something in this ‘players who are not Michael Vaughan also contributing somehow’ strategy? Perhaps if England could really lean into this in 2005, their relentless Ashes compaction might finally come to an end.

1. First innings top-scorer, Rob Key, clean bowled for 47 at the WACA in case you’re wondering – “a stout, mostly passive knock,” according to Wisden. ︎
2.  In the Australian version of this book, this will be switched to 4-2. The 2-2 above will similarly be switched to 2-2. ︎
3. An LP of an innings, if you will. ︎

---

So, to reiterate, The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments is out in the UK next week, but you don’t have to wait. You can order it now to arrive ASAP – and we would greatly appreciate it if you did because this kind of thing really goes down well with publishers.

Our preferred outlet for both moral and commission-based reasons is bookshop.org but we’d ideally like to sell all the copies that have ended up elsewhere as well.

We’ve also seen it for sale at TGJones (WH Smith to you), Blackwell’s and Awesome Books.

If you make a strong and compelling case, we will also permit you to buy The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments from Amazon. This is our least favoured option, but we would rather you buy it from Amazon than not buy it at all.

Meanwhile, it came out yesterday in Australia and has already been sighted in a shop. If you’re Down Under, you’ll find a list of places where you can get it on this page.

The post 51. Michael Vaughan Declines A Crushing first appeared on King Cricket.

Related posts:

1. Don’t totally discard Michael Vaughan
2. Michael Vaughan and Alastair Cook keep panic at bay
3. Why is Michael Vaughan not in England’s Ashes squad?

from King Cricket https://ift.tt/h8cMeLl

Sophie Ecclestone in the micro-est-cosm; Harry Brook leading from the front; and the ghosts of Rohit and Kohli | Mop-up of the day

3 minute read

We love Sophie Ecclestone, but today’s misfortune feels very on-brand.

Rightly or wrongly (but probably, if we’re brutally honest, more rightly than wrongly) Ecclestone became the public face of England’s fitness and fielding frailties when she refused to do an interview with critic Alex Hartley during last winter’s Ashes.

Since then, things have changed, sand lines have been drawn and Ecclestone has taken a short break from the game for general mental wellbeing.

At the same time, some things don’t really change.

Sophie Ecclestone is an incredible bowler. Sophie Ecclestone is not a gymnast.

Today, off just the second ball of the match, Ecclestone appeared to suffer two separate injuries in the course of one fielding effort.

First her knee locked up and then as a product of that, she tumbled awkwardly onto her shoulder while attempting to scoop the ball away from the boundary toblerone.

Come the 23rd over, Ecclestone was invited to discover how severe these injuries were. She got through only five balls, but Ecclestone being Ecclestone, this was still enough to pick up a wicket.

So…

• Full commitment to fielding = two injuries and failure to prevent a boundary
• Less than an over of tentative, half-hearted bowling = dismissal of the number five batter

This is not a wholly inaccurate synopsis of what you’re likely to get from England’s finest bowler.

“All right, me hearties. Follow me!”

The problem with leading by example is that no-one can really do anything until you’ve provided the necessary example.

“What are we meant to be doing here?” asked England’s batters today.

“I’ll show you!” replied Harry Brook.

Unfortunately, by that point, most of his troops had already been dismissed. Jamie Overton was in by the time Brook showed them how to hit a fifty and number 11, Luke Wood, was in by the time he reached his hundred via his third six in three balls.

As a batter, it’s quite hard to follow when you’re already back in the shed.

The ghosts of Rohit and Kohli

If you, like us, had mentally filed Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli away as ‘no longer playing for India’ it was slightly jarring to see the two of them doing precisely that this weekend.

On some level, we knew they hadn’t fully gone away, but on a much larger and more mentally obvious level, we’d written a big thing about Rohit retiring and a big thing about Kohli retiring and had then followed a lengthy narrative that spanned the British summer about how India were going to shape up without them.

Retirement pieces are essentially obituaries. Even if the death is only of one particular aspect of the person’s life, it still feels oddly haunting to see those people out there doing that very thing like nothing has happened.

Let’s chalk it up as a Halloween miracle and then ignore ODIs until such time as these uncomfortable contradictions have resolved themselves.

Big winter ahead. Sign up for our email.

The post Sophie Ecclestone in the micro-est-cosm; Harry Brook leading from the front; and the ghosts of Rohit and Kohli | Mop-up of the day first appeared on King Cricket.

Related posts:

1. The Sophie Ecclestone displacement factor | a T20 World Cup semi-finals preview
2. Forget Virat Kohli and Harry Brook’s absences for personal reasons – the truly sensational news at the start of this India tour is about Ben Stokes
3. Rohit Sharma: all over the place as a Test batter, less annoying than Virat Kohli as a Test captain

from King Cricket https://ift.tt/jMbqeBY

Cummins, coffee, Christmas? Broad, beer, bog? Some FAQs about The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments

4 minute read

We’ve been asked a lot of questions about our book The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments. We’ve also made up a few. If you’ve any further questions, ask away in the comments section and maybe we’ll tackle them in a follow-up.

1. What’s it about?

Come on, that’s not a serious question. This isn’t one of those novels with an abstract title that’s all about the memory of a feeling. It’s about the 50 most ridiculous Ashes moments. We count them down from Number 50 to Number 1 and we say a bit about each of them.

2. Who’s it by?

It’s by the writer of this website, Alex Bowden, who is British, and Dan Liebke, who is Australian. That balance means the rankings are scrupulously fair and not weighted towards one nation or the other.

3. Do you have a photo of three copies of it next to a bowl of cricket balls?

Yes.

4. Did Pat Cummins really write the foreword?

Yes! We feel like people don’t really believe that, but it’s true.

5. Hasn’t he got better things to do?

Yes, but he gets those better things done as well. They can accomplish a lot, these high-achieving polymaths.

6. Is it a toilet book?

We are not at all squeamish about this literary genre. Some look down on reading material for the smallest room, but we’ve always felt there’s an art to writing for that audience. Your work’s got to be punchy and when people are only dipping in and out, you can’t get away with filler.

That said, it might depend on how fast a reader you are, or how much you get distracted by full colour photography. Common medical advice is that a bowel movement shouldn’t really take longer than 3-5 minutes with 10 minutes frequently cited as the recommended upper duration.

Each chapter of The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments is around 1,000 words which would apparently take the average reader 4m13s. It’ll therefore be perfectly viable as a toilet book for many people, but alas we cannot promote it as such for medical reasons.

If in doubt, please consult your medical practitioner.

7. Is Stuart Broad in it?

Yeah, of course. Loads.

Look – he’s even pictured on the back cover, on the right there.

8. If it’s on a table next to me and I can’t be bothered moving it, am I allowed to use it as a coaster?

Sure. It’s yours. Knock yourself out. Spill beer on it, decorate it with coffee rings. We’re not going to tell you how to look after your own belongings. In fact, ideally treat it so badly that it falls apart and you feel moved to buy a replacement copy.

9. Would it make a good Christmas present?

Well Christmas is beginning to loom ominously and it coincides with the Ashes and this book costs less than £20. As such, if you know anyone who likes cricket and they also have a sense of humour, this would be the perfect present for them.

Equally, if you’re buying for a cricket fan and they lack a sense of humour, maybe this will help them develop one. Worth a try, isn’t it? At the very least, you’ll be able to talk to them about Alan Mullally’s batting the next time you’re obliged to engage them in conversation.

10. Where is it on sale?

If you’re in the UK, our strong preference is that you buy it from bookshop.org. Not only do we earn a small commission if you buy through one of our links, but 10% of every sale also goes to fund your local, independent bookshop.

Most of those sorts of places were killed by Amazon’s tactic of selling books (and other stuff) below cost. Now that it’s got something approaching a monopoly, Amazon charges small companies to sell products through its website and again to use its delivery service. It then undercuts those same small companies whenever the data it gathers reveals a product worth selling itself.

Amazon also treats its staff dreadfully and wriggles out of paying anywhere near the taxes it should. But you can buy the book from there if you want.

But ideally don’t.

We’ve also seen it for sale at TGJones (WH Smith to you), Blackwell’s and Awesome Books.

If you’re in Australia, you’ll find a list of places where you can get it on this page.

The post Cummins, coffee, Christmas? Broad, beer, bog? Some FAQs about The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments first appeared on King Cricket.

Related posts:

1. What have been the most ridiculous Ashes moments of the last 50 years?
2. The 52nd most ridiculous Ashes moment: Mark Waugh replaces Steve Waugh
3. The 2019 Ridiculous Ashes was a great Ridiculous Ashes, the 2019 Ridiculous Ashes was a ridiculous Ridiculous Ashes

from King Cricket https://ift.tt/tnMs0EL

Knightmare: But the only way is onward after Heather’s “ooh nasty” year

3 minute read

Heather Knight’s year began with an Ashes defeat in which England lost every match. It then progressed to losing the captaincy, after which she utterly knackered one of her legs. Never mind taking a step forwards, a sidestep would have been nice. (Not that she’d have been capable with that hammy.)

Some wondered whether Knight would continue in international cricket after losing the captaincy. At 34, she’s an age where retirement wouldn’t seem silly. She didn’t want to retire though – and fair enough. She’s still young enough that she can recover from serious injuries in double-quick time, after all.

Heather Knight’s slightly odd reaction to failing to reclaim the Ashes

Knight returned to the England side earlier this month after coming a cropper against the West Indies in May.

“That was a pretty awful day to be honest. I felt my hamstring rip off. That was not that fun.”

Eesh. Despite never having torn a hamstring off the bone ourself, we’re not inclined to disagree with that assessment.

Knight suffered a tear in the same leg in 2013, so she’s always been wary. A month before it went this last time, she’d told England’s physios her hammies were in “the best place that they felt for a long time.”

Imagine how deflating that must have been. Being post-captaincy must already have felt like entering the outro of her career (and youth) and now her body had not just let her down, it had done so in a slightly grisly way that seemed designed to make her worry about specific frailties.

Will Charlotte Edwards’ England play well enough to wash away all these meaningless lines in the sand they’ve been making?

Knight opted against surgery because it would have ruled her out of the World Cup. However, that sort of piquant ambitious impatience isn’t necessarily the best mindset for recovering from something like this.

As England Women’s National Lead for Physiotherapy, Angela George, put it to S Sudarshanan of Cricinfo, Knight was always keen to push on, but, “… we were always able to justify our decisions that fundamentally, the body needed to heal and put that part of the tendon back onto the bone.”

Persuasive stuff. You definitely want your tendons affixed to the relevant bones rather than just flapping about in their pointlessly.

Vindication for George on that count, but so too on her assessment that Knight, “would not need an awful lot of game-time to get back to her very best.”

So far in her career, Knight has scored two hundreds in 14 Tests, which is exceptional. She has a T20 hundred to her name as well – a feat that is always remarkable and more so when it completes the triple-format set. Her ODI hundred record is oddly nondescript though. Before today she had only scored two centuries in 153 appearances.

Now it’s three and this one also means England have already qualified for the semi-finals with two group games still to go.

Hamtastic.

Why not get King Cricket articles by email? Seems like it would make your life easier and, dare we say it, better.

The post Knightmare: But the only way is onward after Heather’s “ooh nasty” year first appeared on King Cricket.

Related posts:

1. Heather Knight’s slightly odd reaction to failing to reclaim the Ashes

from King Cricket https://ift.tt/6QxCj7D

Charlie Dean valiantly and innovatively forces Pakistan to use fielders

2 minute read

For a while there, it looked like two of the three main cricket disciplines were going to be enough for Pakistan.

Tammy Beaumont got bowled, Amy Jones got bowled and Nat Sciver-Brunt got bowled.

At this point, Heather Knight called on all her years of experience and came up with the idea of sticking her leg in the way.

She was out lbw.

Then Emma Lamb was bowled before Sophia Dunkley and Alice Capsey were both out lbw.

At this point, it rained for a bit and after a delay, England forced Pakistan to do something they really did not want to do. Charlie Dean in particular, forced them to field.

She and Em Arlott turned 78-7 into 125-7, at which point Pakistan brought on a substitute fielder, Syeda Aroob Shah, to run Arlott out.

Positively delirious at having opened up a whole new world of fielder-assisted wicket-taking possibilities, Omaima Sohail then took a catch to dismiss Dean.

After a little bit of Pakistan batting, it rained again.

The post Charlie Dean valiantly and innovatively forces Pakistan to use fielders first appeared on King Cricket.

Related posts:

1. Dean Elgar’s pretty South African isn’t he?
2. Did you see… Dean Elgar elbowing himself out?
3. Dean Elgar will probably be out by the time we’ve finished typing this

from King Cricket https://ift.tt/rRAB7IQ

Cricket’s forever home in Wavertree: Fundraising fight goes on to secure club’s future

Words by HENRY ECCLES

Phill O’Brien, Chairman of Wavertree Cricket Club

In mid-September, Phill O’Brien was walking down the path that ran alongside Wavertree Cricket Club when he bumped into a woman walking her dog. 

Unaware that she was speaking to Wavertree’s chairman, she mentioned the work the cricket club had done replacing the wall that used to block the community’s view of the ground with a much more open fence. 

O’Brien said: “I ended up stopping and chatting to her for a bit. I explained the situation with the ground, and do you know what? She bought a community lottery ticket off me right there.”

2025 was a strong season for Wavertree as their second XI won promotion to the Premier League for the first time by winning the first division. But off the field, their future has been up in the air for almost a year. 

At the end of 2024, O’Brien was made aware that Wavertree Sport & Recreation 1921 Limited, the company that owns the land on which the cricket club sits, would be upping the cost of rent to £20,000 per year. 

This was a steep jump from the current cost of £6,000, and ultimately too high a fee for the club to continue to pay in the long run.

Despite the doubt this cast over the cricket club’s future, O’Brien stressed the positive relationship he had with the company.

2025 Teams of the Year: Premier Division

Division One

Division Two

“I understand why they’re doing what they’re doing,” he said.

“These aren’t people I have a bad relationship with, the people that run the company, they’re people that I respect.

“We had really constructive discussions about what could be a way forward.”

O’Brien and Wavertree approached the company to buy the land outright, but were ultimately turned down. 

Instead, an agreement was reached in November 2024, whereby the cricket club would buy the controlling shares of the company for £200,000 by December 2026. 

For a club that is used to paying £6,000 a year in rent, raising £200,000 in 26 months will be a mammoth undertaking. 

But O’Brien is cautiously optimistic and has the utmost faith in the cricketing community.

He said: “It’s a very peculiar set of circumstances.

“If we were buying the ground, the ECB would help – but because we’re buying the shares, they can’t.

“I’m not feeling badly done to, it’s an exciting challenge. If we get it right, we become rent free.”

Along with the cricket ground, if Wavertree can raise the funds they will also be in control of the clubhouse building, carpark, and road that runs up the side of the ground.

“There’s 3,000 square foot of land that comes with buying the company which would give us the opportunity to generate revenue and be very self-sustaining moving forwards.”

With an important year of fundraising ahead, O’Brien was keen to share some of the initiatives already put in place to get Wavertree on the road to self-sustenance. 

He said: “We’re shortly, alongside Redmen TV, launching a sporting memorabilia raffle.

“If anybody has any sporting memorabilia they’d like to donate then that would be greatly appreciated.

“In the new year, we hope to launch a 50/50 campaign in which we get 50 people to raise £50.

“Into next summer, we’ve got two more family fun days planned. We had our first at the end of this season and it went down really well.”

---

The event was captured by a group of media students from Edge Hill University, who later produced a video to aid the fundraising campaign. 

O’Brien’s focus is on the community lottery. Players by one ticket a month for £10, and each winner receives 50% of the pot, up to £250. He was keen to share that the lottery has been supported by a number of people in the local cricketing community but believes there are even more people who would get involved if they knew about it.

“We already have 170 members paying £10 a month to play,” he said.

“We’ve had really great support from the cricketing community with this, with people from 10 other cricket clubs in the area playing.

“Stuart Broad, the chairman of Spring View CC, was a recent winner.

“The support we’ve had so far has been brilliant but I’m sure there are more people in the cricketing community who would be willing to spare £10 a month to help us out.

“If we do have to end up borrowing money, the lottery shows any lender that we’ve got consistent support.”

Over the last 12 months, O’Brien has seen first-hand the huge impact that community support can have on such a huge undertaking.

A recent visit from the government minister for sports and culture, Stephanie Peacock, shows that the club’s cause has reached a national level.

O’Brien said: “She was there having a look at the place, and took part in some cricket, but the most important thing was the discussions she had with us about our future.

“She’s going away to have a look at what options there might be for funding for us.”

---

The next 12 months are going to be ones of uncertainty and the goal won’t be achieved overnight, but instead through sustained hard work from within the club and generous support from the wider cricketing community.

The magnitude of the task ahead is not lost on O’Brien but given the community input he’s already seen and now the support offered by Ms Peacock and MP Paula Barker means he remains optimistic.

He added: “Wavertree Cricket Club is a registered charity so if we buy the controlling shares they become an asset of the charity and this locks them forever for community use.

“Even if in the future they have to be sold the money would have to go to something cricket or sport-related in the community.”

from Merseyside Cricket Online https://ift.tt/53MhJB1

14 England things that happened in the summer of 2025 – do they tell us anything?

7 minute read

Sometimes we do this thing where we sift the summer’s events, pick out the more striking moments and then see whether we can perceive a vague yet coherent picture. There’s no analysis here. We offer no conclusions. At best, it’s an exercise that might get you half a step closer to what Werner Herzog refers to as ‘ecstatic truth’.

We haven’t done this for a few years. It looks like 2022 was the last one, at the start of the Ben Stokes era. We did it in 2021 as well, which gives a sense of what preceded it.

With that in mind, maybe this year’s ‘findings’ won’t reveal themselves for a year or two.

Nevertheless…

1. County cricket had a structural review

Not strictly speaking England-related, but there are ramifications. 10 minutes into the county season they started talking about changing the County Championship next year. Then they argued about it for absolutely the entire summer before eventually floating an impenetrable bonkers compromise… which was rejected.

2. Sam Cook made his Test debut

Against Zimbabwe. He took 1-119 and they never picked him again.

3. Zak Crawley proved himself the very best batter in the whole wide world

In that same match. And so they did pick him again.

4. England hit 400 in an ODI

England played both ODIs and T20s against the West Indies at the start of summer. They won the former 3-0 and there was presumably a result in the latter as well – although who’s got time to check such things? The most memorable match (and we’re using that word generously) was the first one – Harry Brook’s first as permanent white ball captain – when England made 400 and won by 238 runs. This set out their new template of trying to score so many runs that no-one notices they don’t have enough proper bowlers.

5. Harry Brook charged Jasprit Bumrah

It didn’t take long for the England v India Test series to reveal it was going to be a cracker. It was pretty clear by the end of Jasprit Bumrah’s opening over, by which point Zak Crawley had already been dismissed. Bumrah then accounted for Ben Duckett and Joe Root before finishing the day giving Harry Brook all sorts of trouble. After sleeping on it, Brook concluded that the best way to counter the world’s best bowler would be to run down the pitch and carve him for four. Multiple Tests of to and fro between these two? Yes please.

6. Josh Tongue turned up late

So memorable was the bowling of Jasprit Bumrah in that first Test, it’s jarring to recall that the match was ultimately decided by the bowling of Josh Tongue – despite the fact he allowed India to reach 453-5 in their first innings before deigning to take his first wicket. But arriving for the Test bang on eight hours late, Tongue didn’t let prolonged abject non-contribution to his team’s cause dissuade him from bagging a hatful. 0-78 in the first innings became 4-86, and then 0-60 in the second became 3-72.

7. Shoaib Bashir registered England’s most expensive figures since 1950

While also being England’s most successful bowler. Throughout the second Test, there was criticism for Ben Stokes’ decision at the toss, but the simple truth was they bowled so badly that Shoaib Bashir’s 5-286 ended up the best effort. Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse and Ben Stokes all notched bowling centuries, but only took five wickets between them, while Josh Tongue raced to 0-42 off his first six overs in a frantic rush to get to the wicket-taking bit, but then never really actually delivered that crucial second part. (He was committed to his bipolar approach though. By the fifth Test he’d shorn away all mediocrity to the extent he was delivering nothing but byes, wides and jaffas.) The end result was India set England an eye-watering victory target of 608, which a surprisingly large number of people thought they had a chance of getting. That surely says something about where we are right now.

8. Zak Crawley called on the physio for a made-up injury

But not only that, he did so immediately after stopping Jasprit Bumrah a whole bunch of times due to a fictional distraction. This was positively Herculean transparent time-wasting shithousery. India were understandably very unhappy, just as England were very unhappy when Shubman Gill had stopped the entire game for a lovely, protracted massage so that KL Rahul could make up the time he’d been off the field – a period of absence that would otherwise have prevented him from opening the batting.

9. Ravindra Jadeja declined to score some runs

And it was extraordinarily entertaining.

10. Ben Stokes tried to claim that pain is “just an emotion”

Rather than your body’s way of telling you that it’s sustained some damage. Just an emotion? Stokes sat out the next Test and hasn’t played since.

11. Chris Woakes walked out to bat one-handed

The defining moment of the summer and, really, of Chris Woakes’ career as well. (We mean that in a good way.) After shouldering a colossal workload relatively well, Woakes shouldered the soggy Oval turf rather less well in the fifth and final Test and was ultimately forced to retire from international cricket. Before that though, he had to complete a decisive Test match which climaxed with England needing 17 runs for victory from their last partnership. One-armed he may have been, but Woakes was needed as one half of that partnership, so out he went to complete agonising singles with a recently dislocated shoulder. England lost, but his mere presence elevated that passage of play to one that we’ll always remember.

12. Something finally went Mohammed Siraj’s way

The exact same passage of play! What a finish! Mohammed Siraj was the only quick bowler to make it through all five Tests. But if his body remained intact, his constant presence hadn’t come without cost. Siraj had in fact been shaping up as some sort of slapstick fall guy character. He’d dropped crucial catches and dropped them for six; he’d been flayed to all parts; and most memorably of all, he’d feebly and tragically blocked the ball onto his own stumps at the end of the third Test after an hour of stout resistance when just a handful of runs were required for victory. But Mohammed Siraj did not give up. On the 25th day of the series, he boomed down endless outswingers and took the wicket that levelled the series.

13. Sonny Baker made his international debut and it went terribly

Is this one of those where we’ll look back on it in years to come and laugh about how irrelevant debut performances are in the grand scheme of things, or is it one where we’ll look back and marvel that such a short-lived groundswell of enthusiasm should propel a player into the England team on such flimsy evidence?

14. Jacob Bethell hit his first professional hundred

But England’s ODI team still didn’t contain enough bowlers.

Before you go, a couple of quick points about our book

There aren’t millions of copies of The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments available in the UK because most of them have gone to Australia. This means that even though the book’s not technically out yet, if you definitely want to secure a copy – for you or for someone else – don’t hang about: order it sooner rather than later.

We can’t imagine it’ll sell out on day one, but you never know – we’re not talking silly numbers here.

It’s worth emphasising that ordering in advance is a big help for us because all those sales persuade the publisher and retailers there’s a market for the book. It also give it a bit more prominence in those crucial first few days which should help it along a little.

Big thanks in advance. And please order it from bookshop.org rather than Amazon. It seems to be appearing on a few other sites as well.

The post 14 England things that happened in the summer of 2025 – do they tell us anything? first appeared on King Cricket.

Related posts:

1. 12 England things that happened in the summer of 2022 – maybe they tell a story of some kind (or maybe they don’t)
2. 12 England things that happened in the 2021 summer – several of which you’ve almost certainly already forgotten about
3. 13 things that happened this summer that sort of sum things up but mostly don’t

from King Cricket https://ift.tt/3Gp5YNa

Carrying [beer with] your bat news

2 minute read

As the world’s foremost authority on ‘things with holes in which can carry multiple pints of beer at cricket matches’ we bring you news!

And not just any class of news. We bring you the very finest form of news: third-hand news.

Sam emailed to say: “Spotted at Taunton. Not my picture so I have no further information. But it speaks for itself.”

This is, of course, a distant relation of The Device – the robust beer-carrier that doubles as a secure, hands-free pint sanctuary once you are seated.

The Device was a 1990s creation of Special Correspondent Dad, yet it still draws admiring looks and enquiries to this day.

We haven’t bothered asking Dad his opinion of this latest version. We can still visualise him wincing any time anyone knocked a stump into the ground with the face of a bat, so we’re pretty sure he’ll be pretty damn squeamish about someone putting four ruddy great holes through one.

One can only hope that the bat in question was already fatally compromised before work got underway.

This is, however, not the first alternative Device we have reported on.

In 2017, Mike spotted a jingoistic supersized Device at Edgbaston and more recently, Chuck reported on, “a pale, somewhat commercial, and rather flimsy looking imitation of The Device,” that was being handed out at a Pixies gig.

But those are not the examples that came to mind upon seeing this.

Instead, we thought of these:

Ged spotted these in the beer garden bar of The Milk House in Sissinghurst, Kent.

Sign up for our email to be kept abreast of all future developments in the field of ‘things with holes in which can carry multiple pints of beer at cricket matches’.

The post Carrying [beer with] your bat news first appeared on King Cricket.

Related posts:

1. Check out these magnificent beer-carrying cricket bat devices
2. Cricket beer carrying goes up a notch – The Device gets supersized
3. Cricinfo scorecard news

from King Cricket https://ift.tt/m5oX3jK

The 52nd most ridiculous Ashes moment: Mark Waugh replaces Steve Waugh

< 1 minute read

We originally pitched The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments as The 52 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments in honour of Rob Key’s half century in the 2002 Boxing Day Test that so triumphantly denied Australia an innings victory and forced them to bat a second time. Alas, Affirm Press fought us down to a round 50. We obviously didn’t want the 51st and 52nd entries to go to waste though, so we’re going to publish them online as amuses bouches for the 50 that made it onto paper.

Our book co-author Dan Liebke has published Number 52 in his newsletter and we’ll be publishing Number 51 according to our ususal “in the fullness of time” schedule. (Don’t worry, it’ll be fairly soon. We’ve got a book to sell, after all.)

Number 52 is Mark Waugh Replaces Steve, aka The Second World(-Class) Waugh. It is not in the book, but it’ll give you a pretty decent sense what the rest of the book is like.

52. Mark Waugh Replaces Steve by Dan Liebke

aka The Second World(-Class) Waugh

Read on Substack

Go and have a read and then please leave a nice comment below saying how fun it is and how you’ve ordered the book and can’t wait to read it.

A reminder that you can order The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments from bookshop.org and also a few other places, including Amazon. Please don’t use Amazon unless we really, really can’t persuade you otherwise. (To be 100% clear on this, we would rather you buy it from Amazon than not buy it at all.)

The post The 52nd most ridiculous Ashes moment: Mark Waugh replaces Steve Waugh first appeared on King Cricket.

Related posts:

1. The 2019 Ridiculous Ashes was a great Ridiculous Ashes, the 2019 Ridiculous Ashes was a ridiculous Ridiculous Ashes
2. What have been the most ridiculous Ashes moments of the last 50 years?
3. England’s and Australia’s top three most ridiculous Ashes captains

from King Cricket https://ift.tt/MskjAqr

Will Charlotte Edwards’ England play well enough to wash away all these meaningless lines in the sand they’ve been making?

2 minute read

Sand drawing is best left to the ni-Vanuatu. You want to make a line that people will pay attention to, etch it in stone or something.

This time last year, England were knocked out of the T20 World Cup in the group stages. Their final match, against the West Indies, saw them drop Qiana Joseph five times. On two of those occasions, fielders on the boundary essentially dropped her for six.

Speaking ahead of the Ashes that followed a month or two later, then head coach Jon Lewis described that experience as “a really nice line-in-the-sand moment”.

According to Lewis: “There was some really honest discussions within the playing group about how we were on the field and off the field in and around the World Cup in terms of our preparation and how we did things and how we wanted to be on the field.”

A particular area of focus was how they dealt with pressure situations. We’re not really in spoiler territory here when we say that these issues were not unequivocally resolved in time for the Ashes. Australia won all seven games.

On one single day during the Test match, England dropped seven chances.

Not enough weekend beach sport? Jon Lewis needs to have a proper think about why England grassed seven chances in one day

“We felt like we couldn’t do anything right out in Australia and we obviously felt hugely negative about our whole experience there,” said Sciver-Brunt recently.

“Cricket-wise, we just didn’t put out the performances that we wanted to and that we would have been proud of. We have been reflecting on that, trying to draw a line in the sand and bringing in different things on and off the pitch. It has been a really good catalyst for us to be in the place that we are now.”

These bloody lines in the sand.

Talk is famously inexpensive and further discounts can be had if you shop around. England’s progress under new coach and captain combo Charlotte Edwards and Nat Sciver-Brunt will be judged not in words, or in beach art, but on the field.

We’re not sure what tinpot local airport they flew to the 2025 World Cup from (“I’ve been through the mill to even get on the plane,” said Heather Knight) but the very, very early signs are that they’ve found their feet okay in India. They played four warm-up games and won them all.

Impressively, one of those was against India. Even more impressively, another was against Australia – a team so dedicated to winning, you imagine they even practise the toss.

Now Sciver-Brunt and her team are underway in the tournament proper and seemingly hell-bent on dismissing all of South Africa’s batters before they get chance to offer up any chances that might be dropped.

Strong start. But pressure awaits.

• The King Cricket email is something you DEFINITELY want to sign up for
• Crowdfunding keeps this website going. You can find more details here
• Or why not buy our book, The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments? It’s a right old page-turner

The post Will Charlotte Edwards’ England play well enough to wash away all these meaningless lines in the sand they’ve been making? first appeared on King Cricket.

Related posts:

1. Charlotte Edwards eyes remaining unconquered worlds, Ben Duckett eyes a duck
2. Charlotte Edwards’ bit is done – good work
3. England play South Africa in a pretty meaningless T20 international and Bob isn’t playing

from King Cricket https://ift.tt/tRGKNVH