King Cricket

July 31, 2018 England / India

Which is more likely: a Virat Kohli hundred, an Adil Rashid five-for or a Kuldeep Yadav five-for?

2 minute readMany things will happen when England play India from tomorrow. It’s tempting to imagine that the first Test match is some sort of newspaper headline final which will only feature those who were prominent during the quarters and semis in recent weeks. Viewed from that perspective, which is more likely:

July 30, 2018 Extras

The Lord’s Throdkin dispute

2 minute readYou may or may not remember the Lord’s Throdkin. If you do, you will be very excited to hear that there has been a development… Ged writes: Lancastrian nephew-in-law Escamillo Escapillo is partial to my Lord’s Throdkin cookies. I was to spend the first of three days at Lord’s watching

July 26, 2018 England

Adil Rashid’s back!

2 minute readAs in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. Is Adil Rashid a bowler who can take wickets when others cannot? Yeah, probably. Sometimes. Does Adil Rashid’s selection for the Test squad having previously jacked in red ball cricket maybe raise a couple of awkward questions? Erm, yeah, probably.

July 26, 2018 England

The three main changes you can always make to the England Test team

2 minute readWhen a Test squad’s due to be announced, everyone normally has a default XI in mind and then we all make swaps according to our own prejudices. Typically, everyone wants to make between one and three changes. Change No 1 is when you replace the rubbish batsman you hate with

July 25, 2018 County cricket / Extras

Sorry about this but we’re going to report the latest rumours about The Hundred

2 minute readThat joke isn’t funny any more. You know the one. The one where you make up an outlandish format detail about The Hundred in an effort to satirise the ECB. The problem is that while The Hundred seems like rich source material, it really isn’t. The joke suggestions are too

July 24, 2018 Australia

Watch the Al Jazeera match fixing documentary

2 minute readIf you want to watch that Al Jazeera documentary about match-fixing (spot fixing, actually) to see for yourself whether the allegations have any merit, here it is (or click here). The film went out in May, but it’s in the news again this week because Glenn Maxwell’s been talking about

July 23, 2018 Match report

Essex v West Indies indoctrination of a young mind match report

2 minute readDan writes: My seven year old son looks a demon with the bat in his hands in the back garden, and he actually pays attention when the cricket’s on the TV. He seems to reserve special interest for the Test matches, which is very pleasing. So this summer we signed

July 20, 2018 England / India

We made up a word and Wisden published it

< 1 minute readThe word is ‘schedusfaction’ and it means ‘satisfaction with the scheduling of a cricket tour’. We didn’t realise the world had use for such a word until this summer. England are about to play a Test series against India. You may be aware of this and that might be because

July 18, 2018 England / India

Virat Kohli’s ‘I’ve just been bowled by Adil Rashid’ face

< 1 minute readWhen we wrote about what it’s like to be Virat Kohli, we didn’t for one minute think that there would be any overlap with what it’s like to be Mike Gatting. Turns out there is. Virat Kohli and Mike Gatting both do a thing where they make an astonished face

July 17, 2018 England / India

Please can we very quickly talk about that very fine MS Dhoni innings in the last one-dayer?

2 minute readImagine a tiger hunting a deer. He’s squatting down in the undergrowth, taut and primed to strike. The deer is ambling around just in front of him, oblivious. When the deer gets close enough, the tiger will leap out and bite him in the neck. The deer mills around. He