5 minute readThe second Test was “a differently played game” according to Ben Stokes. It still resulted in England winning in Pakistan though, which is not a thing that had happened too often until this month. The match has left us with quite a few half-baked thoughts rolling around our largely empty
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Abrar Ahmed: first look in Test cricket
2 minute readWe don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway. How very Pakistan to fight fire with magic. How very Pakistan to have a random pile of spare magic just lying around waiting to be used in a Test match – this time
Continue readingMultan Test pitch preview with Fred Durst
3 minute readEngland’s win over Pakistan in Rawalpindi has given rise to several highly annoying articles asking whether Ben Stokes’ team are changing Test cricket forever. Maybe a bit, maybe not so much. Does it matter? Can’t it just be a great Test victory on a fairly awful pitch? Because that really
Continue readingAre Stokes and McCullum right? Is a win bigger than a loss?
3 minute readIt was a win that England were racing to catch from the outset. The Test began with Zak Crawley hitting three fours off Naseem Shah’s opening over and it ended with the light meters out. Ben Stokes’ men never really slowed in between. Even if England hadn’t won, you’d have
Continue readingWill Jacks: first look in Test cricket
2 minute readWe don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway. England have a long and rich history of travelling to the subcontinent and handing out caps to spin bowling all-rounders who they wouldn’t ordinarily pick for either their batting or their bowling. These
Continue readingWhy Harry Brook’s six fours in an over was better than six sixes in an over
2 minute readWell it definitely, definitely wasn’t the wild shits. The first day of England’s first Test in Pakistan since 2005 saw them reach 500 quicker than any Test team ever before. Peak dominance of bat over ball came when Harry Brook hit six fours in one Saud Shakeel over. We put
Continue readingHalf England’s Test squad have been repeatedly consumed by an urgent necessity
2 minute readYou can take your own chef with you (Omar Meziane, if you’re wondering), but if you’re in a part of the world you don’t visit too often, there’s a decent chance you’ll come into contact with viruses that your immune system doesn’t know all that well. What we’re saying here
Continue readingAll three Pakistan v England Tests are expected to be sell-outs
2 minute readEngland’s last Test tour of Pakistan finished in December 2005. We launched King Cricket in January 2006. We are about to complete our first lap of Test cricket. That 2005 series finished 2-0 to Pakistan. Shoaib Akhtar and the not-especially-Danish Danish Kaneria skittled England on the fifth day of the
Continue readingWhen Jos Buttler says an Australia v England series is irrelevant, is that enough?
4 minute readEngland have just finished playing Australia in a one-day series. The first match came three days after the T20 World Cup final and the man who went on to captain England in the second game called that scheduling “horrible”. With the bare minimum diplomacy, England’s coach said the series was
Continue readingThe Test match that Simon Kerrigan and James Faulkner played
< 1 minute readNow that we’re in one of those occasional narrow windows when a World Cup isn’t taking place, it seems a good time to point you all towards the final episode of our podcast series about the 2013 Ashes. The 2013 Ridiculous Ashes comes to a climax with what will, for
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