King Cricket

March 20, 2026 England

Why didn’t Liam Livingstone get the message that “Who cares?” wins?

6 minute readTop level cricketers really care about what they do. Caring is the basic fuel for their careers. But whether it’s an Iranian gasfield, a Tesla Cybertruck battery or merely the giving of shits, sometimes fuel can also finish you. Part of an international coach’s job is therefore to protect players

March 18, 2026 Regulars

A very high quality cricket book with a lagoony backdrop

2 minute readSend your pictures of cricket bats and other cricket stuff in unusual places to king@kingcricket.co.uk. Please consider putting the cricket thing in the unusual place yourself. We like those ones. Doyen of King Cricket reader submissions, Ged Ladd, writes… Daisy and I chose to take a short, restful winter break in Sri

March 13, 2026 England

The ECB has exhibited frankly insane levels of confidence in its players this week

3 minute readThe ECB briefly banned all players with England central contracts from speaking to the media this week. What did they think would happen? Did they honestly expect one of them to say something interesting? The ban’s since been lifted – probably on the basis that its mere existence made the

March 12, 2026 England

Well would you spend £1m to not have Brendon McCullum as England coach?

3 minute readUnder Matthew Mott, England were very bad at the 2023 World Cup, then made the semi-finals of the 2024 T20 World Cup, where they lost to India. Under Brendon McCullum, they were very bad at the 2025 Champions Trophy, then made the semi-finals of the 2026 T20 World Cup, where

March 9, 2026 India

Jasprit Bumrah might be the only interesting T20 player we have left

2 minute readAll right you primitive screwheads, listen up. We honestly aren’t all that interested in T20 cricketers who aren’t Jasprit Bumrah any more. It’s a cliché to call bowlers cannon fodder in this format, but we’ve reached a point now where really it’s the batters who are the unchanging nondescript wallpaper.

March 5, 2026 England

“Jos Buttler has been working tirelessly in the nets”

3 minute readWe feel like we’ve read this sentence, or one very much like it, almost daily for the last few weeks. If you hadn’t noticed, Jos Buttler hasn’t been scoring too many runs. He’s apparently tried to correct this with more and more practice. Is this the right approach? If you’d

March 4, 2026 New Zealand / South Africa

Bish bash Bosch: South Africa deserved to be dispatched by Finn Allen for giving people the wrong jobs

< 1 minute readBosch is a simply terrible name for a T20 bowler. It does nothing but invite unflattering commentary exclamations. Today, in the T20 World Cup final against New Zealand, South Africa’s Corbin suffered an over that began 6, 4, 4, 4, 4… BOSH! Finn Allen was the batter responsible and he

February 27, 2026 Extras

Now Harry Brook’s started innovating in the field of pterodactyl wrangling as well

2 minute readEngland T20 captain Harry Brook simply cannot do anything normally. If it isn’t batting, it’s pre-match hydration, and if it isn’t pre-match hydration, it’s pterodactyl wrangling. We’ve previously reported on Babar Azam’s hugely impressive competence as a pterodactyl wrangler. Here he is beckoning one down while Moeen Ali watches the

February 25, 2026 India

It’s NRR time… but NRR isn’t as fun in a T20 tournament because there’s so little scope for nrrdling

2 minute readWe adore nrrdling (the hugely unambitious art of batting to make defeat slightly less awful because it improves your chances of going through to the next stage of the tournament should your team finish level on points with another). It’s not really a thing in T20 though. Due to the

February 20, 2026 India / Zimbabwe

Log it in your online calendar: It’s less than a week until Abhishek Sharma v Brian Bennett in the Super 8s

2 minute readExcuse us looking so far ahead – they’ve each got another match to play before India v Zimbabwe on Thursday – but we’ve been sucked in by the wildly diverging fortunes of Abhishek Sharma and Brian Bennett so far this tournament. We can’t wait to see what happens when they

Mccullum I think will do well as a Steve waugh type who goes to teams and puts his feet in…

Heh, and bugger. My apologies for the slip up, but glad it lead to an opportunistic reply. ...and Ged, I…

VG, Sam. Buttface is an able pupil who might have excelled at sport but for the unfortunate fact that he…

Discuss.

If I may provide some sort of insight, sort of, maybe... In the hell hole brutalisation days of 1980's secondary…

Did you see… Harry Brook’s first ball in Melbourne? Unquestionably the 2025/26 Ashes’ finest moment

Sky Sports has boiled its Ashes coverage down to its purest and greatest form: Mike Atherton and Nasser Hussain standing there talking about what’s gone wrong

The 2019 Ridiculous Ashes (podcast)

The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments is definitely out now – you should buy it for someone! (Possibly yourself)

51. Michael Vaughan Declines A Crushing