Posted by We do this every year now as a means of navigating the heavingly confusing cricket schedule. We draw up a month-by-month guide to the series and tournaments we’ll (most likely) be focusing on in the coming year so that we don’t accidentally piss away some of our enthusiasm on whatever lesser event they’re trying to push on us in the here and now. You’ve got to pace yourselves, people.
To paraphrase Paul Collingwood, no-one in power’s bothered that a game might feature players who are mentally fatigued – they just wanted to get the ‘product’ out there. The end result is a high volume of matches.
That’s no good for players and really it’s no different for us as fans either. Enthusiasm is something that needs time to build. Try to follow everything and you’ll soon find yourself in a no-man’s land of knowing what’s going on without feeling particularly moved by any of it.
Feeling moved by things is important.
Interest waxes and wanes. Interest needs to wax and wane. This calendar is our tool to engineer that for ourself. You may well have entirely different priorities. No problem, that’s fine – but this is what we’ll be aiming to cover here on King Cricket.
The 2024 King Cricket Essentials Calendar
January
- The Ashes, Australia v England (women) – three ODIs, three T20s, one Test
February to March
- The Champions Trophy (men)
April to May
- The County Championship (men) – the first seven rounds
May
- England v Zimbabwe (men) – one Test
June
- World Test Championship final (men) – Australia v South Africa
June to July
- England v India (men) – five Tests
August to September
- World Cup (women) – ODIs
September
- The County Championship (men) – depending when the World Cup final is (we can’t find a date yet)
October
- India v West Indies (men) – two Tests
- Pakistan v South Africa (men) – two Tests
November
- India v South Africa (men) – two Tests
November to December (and on into 2026)
- The Ashes, Australia v England (men) – five Tests
Observations
Everyone calls it a ‘big year’ for the England men’s team, but it’s also a weirdly narrow one. Five Tests against India and five against Australia with a (small) world tournament and a de facto warm-up Test against Zimbabwe the only rays of light from the wider world. (Bilateral white ball series come and go. No-one cares.)
Beyond that, August stands out. UK cricket fans who don’t like The Hundred habitually complain that there’s no other cricket that month these days. However, it strikes us that there’s a very appealing alternative in 2025 – not just some other tournament, but the very best cricketers in the world all together for a World Cup. Except will it be an alternative? The exact dates aren’t yet known. And wouldn’t a World Cup taking place elsewhere completely hollow-out the teams taking part in the women’s Hundred?
A final point: if it ain’t five, it’s two. Beyond the obvious, all the other Test series that have caught our eye for the year ahead are only two matches long. Two-Test series are unsatisfactory anyway, but as we pointed out last summer, that fact is then compounded by two simple rules…
- The shorter the series, the more important it is to start well
- The shorter the series, the less warm-up cricket there will be
Hey-ho.
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What Ashes in January? There isn’t an Ashes this month is there? I’d have heard about it if there was, surely. Even with the fingers in my ears and loud chants of “la la la”.