Extras

Happy birthday to King Cricket

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2 minute read
One of our old logos.
One of our old logos.

Our first reader got in touch with us this week – a man who once went by the name of The Scientician. Some of you may remember him from his shocking exposé of Jaffa Cakes as a sports snack.

The Scientician pointed out to us that we’re 10. We don’t mean in the ‘your mental age is 10’ kind of way – although people do say that kind of thing to us as well.

No, he meant that this website is ten. We started it in January 2006 (albeit at a different web address). That’s ten years ago. The site’s so old that people actually arrived at it via Ask Jeeves.

As The Scientician said in a follow-up email, which we’ll reproduce in full.

“Time…”

He’s got a point. On this domain alone, there’s been over 3,000 posts, over 40,000 comments and well over a million deleted spam comments (genuinely). We also knocked out over a thousand posts on the old Blogspot site in little more than a year. Them were the days.

So how did it all begin?

Er, we’re not entirely sure actually.

We’ve a vague notion that we’d sent The Scientician an email, or quite possibly even an actual letter, and that this had led him to utter the immortal words: “You should write.”

We’ve no real memory of what that particular missive was about. We’re pretty sure it included curlews, but beyond that it’s anyone’s guess. The important thing is that he told us to write and we listened to him.

We asked what we should write and where. He told us to start a website because that was what someone semi-famous had done and they’d got a job out of it.

So we started a website and soon enough we got a job and arguably even what passes for a career out of it.

The end.

Except it isn’t, because we’re just going to carry on the same as always.

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50 comments

      1. This on the day that Tres is replaced by young upstart Chris Rogers, 113*, at the helm of Somerset’s Championship side. Never rest on your laurels, KC, the next generation is always ready to step in and replace you.

  2. Happy birthday! I’m fairly late to the party but am rapidly making up for lost time, measured in skived work hours and inane cricketing ‘bants’. Keep up the good work!

      1. “I also noticed people here wear their outdoor outfits even when they’re home. Why would anyone want to be in jeans when they don’t have to?”

      1. Sam: Helen Pidd – so many reasons to love her – a cyclist, a Mancunian resident, the Guardian’s northern editor and she gave a Syrian refugee a home.

  5. Yay, this is excellent news. Did you bring cakes? In our office people bring cakes on their birthday, and if they don’t the secretary (who has all the birthdays on her calendar) admonishes them by looking at them. I’ll have a vanilla slice please, because they are sweet, creamy and healthy all at once.

    Anyway, to celebrate, here is my stream-of-consciousness reminiscence:

    The Scientician Miriam JRod Suave Ceci SarahCanterbury Mel Mahinda Lemon Bella SixSIxEight AP Webster D Charlton Ne Ed The Other Ed Ged Ladd Sam Thesaurusrus Daneel Rahinda Dandy Dan The So Called Will Price String Deep Cower Jayne Howe Zat Jo Fitz The Dawg SimonC Balladeer Soviet Onion Bailout Other People Now Angry At Being Forgotten Venn Diagrams Pterodactyls Top Trumps StraussCat Meowcus Trescothick Matthew Hayden Rob Key Match Reports Giles Clarke Fat Oaf The Ashes The Greatest Post King Cricket

    Thank you all for hours and hours of entertainment.

    1. I didn’t tell anyone in my office when it was my birthday this year, despite it being the fourth since I’ve worked here.

      Nobody noticed.

  6. On behalf of all the people who read this but don’t post that often – happy birthday KC, long may you reign!

  7. That Jaffa Cake post was one of my favourites. I remember citing it in conversation more than once.

      1. If I remember correctly, one was about Rio Ferdinand eating a Jaffa Cake during a football match, and another was about the whole “OMG! Only Xg of Fat!” marketing approach in general.

        But maybe they were actually deep meaningful conversations about whether Jaffa Cakes were the Jaffa of cakes.

  8. Hope your birthday promises a lot, but then is inconsistent and disappointing.

    This is an England cricket blog, after all.

    1. Well being as the actual day was a couple of weeks ago and we didn’t even notice, we daresay we accomplished that particular mission.

  9. No mean feat this! The blog has witnessed George Bush, the global financial crisis (which I think involved some banks and Ged), Queen Elizabeth, ISIS, IPL, Rangana Herath, global warming debates, Putin, Syrian refugees, Kolpaks, Ebola, and N. Srinivasan.

    Name one blog that has witnessed the things KC has witnessed (other than the ones that have also been around the last decade). NAME ONE, I challenge you.

  10. Well done KC. Thanks for 9 years of putting eloquent words to my half developed gut instincts.

  11. Wasn’t it The Scientician who did those blu-tack animations of key moments of play?

    If he still reads this, why doesn’t he comment here any more? Why doesn’t Suave?

  12. I’m so so sorry. I could have prevented all this suffering by just telling KC that he’s a curlew obsessed loon instead…
    I do read, I commented under another name for a while (not in a snide way, I think I even announced it), but then lost the habit.
    We are all getting older by the second. THE SECOND!

    1. Is that true? We were always under the impression that people remained exactly the same age until their birthdays, at which point they aged A FULL YEAR overnight.

  13. For many years my Facebook identity avoided ageing by the simple expedient of celebrating Ged’s birthday by rolling back the year of birth by one year. Hence Ged remained 20. For the last couple of years, Facebook has prevented the Ged annual rollback; they’ve become a right bunch of cyber-authoritarians.

    But enough about me – happy brithday KC.

    To borrow from one of my favourite poets…

    …now you are ten, you’re as clever as clever. So try and stay ten now, for ever and ever.

    1. I Googled to see which famous poet said happy brithday, Google is useless.

      Happy birthday KC.

  14. Happy Birthday KC. Top job. If only you did a weekly newsletter as well, so I didn’t have to keep logging into the site.

  15. Top work KC, to celebrate the occasion I did a Google image search of Ian Austin, it seemed appropriate for some reason.

      2. Your captain can’t have too much confidence in you if he brings on Graham Thorpe for a trundle ahead of you!

      3. Dates of Comments on that Jim Foat article:
        April 3, 2009
        April 3, 2009
        April 3, 2009
        April 3, 2009
        April 3, 2009
        April 7, 2009
        April 8, 2009
        December 12, 2010
        July 27, 2012
        September 3, 2012
        November 19, 2012
        November 19, 2012
        March 20, 2013
        April 11, 2013
        May 3, 2013
        August 2, 2013
        August 2, 2013
        October 25, 2013
        October 31, 2013
        May 5, 2014
        Comments are closed.

        Just a casual chat among old school friends and acquaintances, spread over five years. Ace.

      4. Wow. Words fail me.

        Imagine seeing off Defreitas and/or Peter Martin, only to then find Ian Austin coming on first change. What would that do to a man.

  16. Happy birthday darling KC. Your dad and I are proud to have given the joy that is you to the world.

      1. But does she bat with a stick of rhubarb?

        Photo of the birthday cake and candles (without the cat)?

        Felicitations.

  18. Congratulations! I admit that I sometimes flirt with other cricket blogs, but I always come back to KC – which according to my daughter means that I am Katy Perry, KC is John Mayer (no, me neither), JRod is Russell Brand, and the Full Toss is Robert Pattinson. Or something like that.

    1. If those are all representatives of youth culture, we’re delighted to discover that half of them are older than us.

      Good work John Mayer, whoever the bloody hell you are.

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