King Cricket

October 14, 2024 Australia

Failing failure Steve Smith to hide down the order after abject failure as Test opener

2 minute read Steve Smith’s cowardly plea to be protected from the new ball has been meekly granted by Australia’s spineless management team, less than a year after he persuaded them he really wanted to make a go of opening the batting. No official comment has yet been made on whether there is

Hats off to Harry Brook’s very particular ‘steamrollered pancake pitch’ set of skills

5 minute read This Multan pitch is flatter than a pancake that’s gone under a Looney Tunes steamroller. That doesn’t mean you can score infinite runs on it though. Even Harry Brook had to settle for a mere 317 – and he’s so far made a hundred in every Test he’s played in

October 9, 2024 England / Pakistan

As a batter, Joe Root honestly isn’t much fun to write about any more

3 minute read Joe Root reached his latest hundred with one of those reverse sweeps of his. We’ve seen them plenty of times before, of course. We’ve seen all of it plenty of times before. It doesn’t stop being impressive, but it’s become a nagging, cumulative impressiveness that never really leaves you, rather

October 7, 2024 England / Pakistan

Chris Woakes’s back, Jack Leach’s back, James Anderson isn’t – three obvious talking points from day one of Pakistan v England

3 minute read England did really well last time they toured Pakistan. Now they’re back without their captain or any of the quick bowlers who did well in that series. Chris Woakes’s back As in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. When England toured and won in 2022, they used four

October 5, 2024 England / Pakistan

Another Multan Test pitch preview with Fred Durst

2 minute read The first Test between Pakistan and England starts on Monday – a somewhat jarring fact, given that most of the recent England news has centred on one-day internationals (both results and squads). It will be in Multan (again). To quickly recap: In 2022 England made their first Test tour to

October 4, 2024 Features

Let’s pick the All-Time Greatest Middle-Aged XI

8 minute read The summer just gone brought the retirement of James Anderson at the age of 41. He took 47 Test wickets in his 40s – more than twice as many as anyone else this century. Extending that a little further, he took 224 wickets after the age of 35. In this

October 2, 2024 India

India’s win over Bangladesh was magnificent – full credit to Ben Duckett

3 minute read You’ll have no doubt seen that India rushed to a Test victory over Bangladesh in roughly two days’ worth of cricket after only 35 overs were possible over the first three days. It was an incredible performance from the batting line-up in particular, hustling their way to 285-9 in 34.4

September 30, 2024 County cricket

Lancashire change County Championship divisions for the seventh time in 13 seasons

2 minute read County Championship first division status is crossing the Pennines from Lancashire to Yorkshire and has now made it to, ooh, let’s say Todmorden. It just passed second division status going the other way. (What we’re saying here is that Lancashire have been relegated and Yorkshire have been promoted.) How did

September 27, 2024 County cricket

Lancashire pin hopes on some kind of Anderson

2 minute read Anderson, Flintoff – it’s a strong looking Lancashire team sheet this week. Pity they couldn’t dig out a Chapple or a Fairbrother or a Wasim Akram. It’s always been reassuring for Lancashire supporters to see Anderson on the team sheet. The club therefore went out and found one. With the

September 24, 2024 County cricket / Uncategorized

Why are Lancashire probably getting relegated?

5 minute read Lancashire are 15 points behind Nottinghamshire and 20 points behind Warwickshire going into the last round of matches. Those two teams will play each other and a draw plus a couple of bonus points for Notts would be enough to save both. That would be true even if Lancashire were