King Cricket

May 12, 2026 County cricket / England

Ben Duckett chose… wisely

3 minute readA modern international cricketer like Ben Duckett has a lot of tricky career decisions to make. Sometimes you don’t know whether you’ve made the right choice until you have or haven’t aged into dust. “This certainly is the cup of The King of Kings,” says grail-hunting, Nazi-collaborating Walter Donovan, shortly

May 8, 2026 County cricket / England

James will Rew the latest instalment of England’s weird, implicit, episodic Test squad announcement

3 minute readEngland confirmed the dropping of Kent’s Zak Crawley today when James Rew walked out to open the batting for Somerset. There are definitely more straightforward ways of announcing these things. English cricket’s rune-readers have been broadly in agreement for a while now that Zak Crawley is no longer an England

May 7, 2026 County cricket

Stone rises as Nottinghamshire lead a more familiar looking County Championship

3 minute readNow that everyone’s played four matches, the 2026 County Championship is starting to take shape. The shape it is taking is that of the 2025 County Championship. No, really. The top five currently looks like this. Which isn’t really so radically different to how things finished last year. In fact

May 1, 2026 County cricket / England

Has Ollie Robinson uncovered a back way into the England Test team?

2 minute readOllie Robinson hasn’t always seemed fully aware of what he needs to do (or not do) if he wants to play for England again. Our favourite recent quote was about how he hasn’t played for the national side since the 2024 Ranchi Test: “Apparently I fell out with the England

April 29, 2026 County cricket

Ralphies, Surrey spin and why winning a game is either the best or worst thing you can do in the County Championship

2 minute readFour weeks into the County Championship and most teams have only played three times. It’s therefore no surprise that four-match Warwickshire find themselves top of the table. They have achieved this after notching one win – exactly the same number as Hampshire, who are bottom. That isn’t to say that

April 23, 2026 County cricket / England

Clamour model: Can’t James Rew just carry on breathing down people’s necks for a bit?

2 minute readEngland always say they want competition for places, but whenever they actually have it, everyone gets all impatient and demands that they hurry up and make the change right now. Somerset’s James Rew will wind up in England’s Test team eventually. Is there any harm in waiting for the right

April 14, 2026 County cricket

If you want to bat for England, bat for Surrey. If you want to bowl for England, bowl for Sussex. And if you want to open for England…

3 minute readA fortnight into the County Championship and it’s hard to weigh the performances of several England Test hopefuls. In many cases who they play for seems to have had almost as much influence on outcomes as how they’re playing. Take, for example, Jamie Smith. This time last week we pointed

April 9, 2026 Regulars

A black standard poodle being conspicuously indifferent to a very good cricket book that you should definitely buy

< 1 minute readIf you’ve got a picture of an animal being conspicuously indifferent to cricket, please send it to king@kingcricket.co.uk. Chess grandmaster and commentator, Peter Svidler, submitted this really quite magnificent photo of a black standard poodle being conspicuously indifferent to The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments, the cricket book we wrote with

April 7, 2026 County cricket / England

Skullwatch: Jamie Smith looks safe then

3 minute readJamie Smith earned himself a mention in our previous article about which England Test players might get the boot for the next Test. We had him down as someone who’d need to play very badly in early season to lose his place, so a match-saving 132 for Surrey presumably keeps

March 31, 2026 England

It’s time for some unsettling disloyalty: If England’s leaders aren’t being ejected then some of the players will be… but which ones?

5 minute readWe are absolutely adamant that England cannot possibly withstand public and media appetite for change in the wake of the Ashes drubbing. (Does 4-1 actually qualify as a drubbing given the three previous scorelines Down Under were all worse than that?) One way or another, rightly or wrongly, action must

On the topic of the phrase, “you chose…wisely”, the following non-cricket related memory from my student days popped into my…

This is neat >Sarah Taylor, the former England wicketkeeper, will be in charge of the fielding drills during the three-Test…

Very odd wicket in this case: https://www.facebook.com/reel/2420986274905267?fs=e&s=TIeQ9V&fs=e&fs=e

Ringo Starr was unquestionably in the right place at the right time, career-wise. Surely timing is almost everything, when drumming…

Steve Smith's at 36 on that list. "Though he's spent most of the last 30 years touring on the jazz…

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