King Cricket

May 25, 2018 England / Pakistan

What the hell is up with Hasan Ali’s hand?

< 1 minute readWe honestly haven’t got much left to say about England’s batting, so let’s instead turn our attention to Hasan Ali’s hand and whatever the hell is up with it. Here’s Hasan Ali’s hand midway through delivering the (apparently) fiendishly tempting wide one that did for Joe Root. Strapping is a

May 23, 2018 South Africa

AB de Villiers finally picks a cake

< 1 minute readAB de Villiers spent rather a long time desperately trying to engineer a cake monopoly. He wanted to retain and eat The Cake of International Cricket; he wanted to retain and eat The Lucrative Cake of T20 Franchise Cricket; and he also wanted to retain and eat The Cake of

May 22, 2018 England / Pakistan

What proportion of Mohammad Amir will play the Tests against England?

3 minute readWe were a tremendously big fan of Mohammad Amir even back when he was called Mohammad Aamer. Things have not always been smooth since then. There have been blips. They say that prison changes a man. We ourself have never been incarcerated. One time we accidentally ran a red light

May 18, 2018 County cricket / England

The Hundred is not going to be a big deal, people aren’t going to talk about it and it won’t attract a new audience

2 minute readAsk a stupid question, get a stupid answer. After that, build a whole stupid thing around the stupid answer and then pin all of your hopes for the survival of your sport on how well the stupid thing fares. The ECB are going to launch this 100-ball competition and they

May 16, 2018 England

Is it right that Jos Buttler won a Test spot without playing first-class cricket?

2 minute readLet’s take a look at how Test teams are picked and whether runs in other formats are relevant. We’ll begin with a quick bit of background. A quick bit of background Doing well at one-day cricket for England used to be a common way of getting into the Test team.

May 15, 2018 Match report

What’s it been like watching Ireland’s first Test, against Pakistan at Malahide?

3 minute readChuck writes: With my Aged Parent heading towards 83 not out this summer (a superb innings), I decided it was time to introduce him to the pleasures of Test cricket by bringing him to his, and Ireland’s, and indeed my first men’s Test match, against Pakistan in Malahide. Well, day

May 14, 2018 County cricket

We’re mostly talking about Ollie Pope again this week, with maybe a dash of James Hildreth and a soupcon of Keaton Jennings

2 minute readA combination of (a) the current state of the England cricket team and (b) the nature of early season cricket means that we’ve almost exclusively been talking about batsmen so far this summer. This isn’t actually all that great for those of us who consider batsmen necessary impediments to the

May 11, 2018 Ireland / Pakistan

Having actually fought for it, Ireland seem to comprehend that Test cricket is worth fighting for

3 minute readThis Ireland v Pakistan Test is a big deal and Ireland are treating it as a big deal. If feels the way international matches are supposed to feel. Ed Joyce said that Test cricket “wasn’t even a pipedream” for Ireland’s men’s team until relatively recently, which really puts things in

May 10, 2018 County cricket / England

Are you in The Wisden Cricket Weekly Gang?

2 minute readDo you mind if we tell you a barely relevant story? If you do mind, you’re probably reading the wrong website. We’re very confident that the pure hilariousness of this tale cannot possibly be conveyed without first-person experience of the person involved, but we’re going to tell you anyway because

May 9, 2018 County cricket / England

Mark Wood’s IPL experience with Chennai Super Kings has helped him make his choices – but where will he go next?

2 minute readYou may remember that earlier in the year, we wrote about the weighted, weighty decisions faced by Mark Wood this season. Wood’s long format career has been in the balance of late. An IPL contract seemed likely to keep him out of all early season first-class cricket and a consequence

It does feel like Bazball has finally jumped the shark but given the volatility of recent Test results we'll probably…

… “picking the best highlights reel” … I think they might be picking the best “High Barnet” (hair) reel. Still…

What an intro!

I met an old team mate in the street a few weeks ago. He introduced me to his friend as…

…”the shonky-looking need to be that much more effective to break into a… team”. I knew there had to be…

Suffering centuries: Six bowlers who conceded extraordinary Test hundreds

Hats off to Harry Brook’s very particular ‘steamrollered pancake pitch’ set of skills

Let’s pick the All-Time Greatest Middle-Aged XI

Less than the sum of their parts: Six Test batting partnerships that invariably disappointed

Five Graham Thorpe innings that were equal parts silly, brilliant and vital