King Cricket

March 3, 2018 England / New Zealand

A second Kane Williamson would have been handy

< 1 minute read“This game is not over until you get Kane Williamson out,” said Nasser Hussain when the New Zealand captain reached his fifty. Entirely untrue. England never did get him out, but still won. Kane Williamson scored getting on for a quarter of the runs in the match. No-one else passed

March 2, 2018 England

Andy Flower’s review of the England Lions tour

< 1 minute read“The Tour has allowed us to learn a great deal about the players….” That’s good. Learning is good. Knowledge is power and all that. “… but the results are obviously extremely disappointing.” Imagine how you’d feel having Andy Flower express his disappointment in you. Andy Flower strikes us as being

March 1, 2018 Associates / West Indies

The UAE briefly looked like they were going to beat the West Indies (and other stories) – mop-up of the day

< 1 minute readIt’s only a warm-up match, but it seems that like much of western Europe, the West Indies still have plenty of warming to do. They’re so cold that you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they’ve suffered a burst pipe or two once they actually thaw. They were bowled out

February 28, 2018 England / New Zealand

England are back to loving 50-over cricket again

< 1 minute readIn the wake of their victory in the second one-day international against New Zealand, England have forgotten about Test cricket again and are back talking about the 50-over World Cup. Having officially changed policy after the first match, they’ve now officially changed back again. Ben Stokes or someone may or

February 27, 2018 County cricket / England

Reece Topley postpones overuse injury for a year

< 1 minute readReece Topley’s not going to play first-class cricket this year. He’s been injured a lot – stress fractures mostly – so Hampshire asked the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) what they should do. The ECB pretty much said that there’s altogether too much domestic cricket for a pace bowler

February 25, 2018 England / New Zealand

England revert to talking about the importance of preserving Test cricket as “the pinnacle of the sport”

2 minute readIn the wake of their defeat in the first one-day international against New Zealand, England have reverted to their traditional position that Tests are the main thing and they don’t really care about anything else. A 4-1 Ashes defeat followed by a 50-over series win encouraged an unprecedented change in

February 22, 2018 Extras

Are ODIs irrelevant or a unifying force?

< 1 minute readAll this talk of a possible divorce between Test and T20 cricket greatly underestimates cricket’s ability to plough on with much the same structure even though no-one’s really happy. Radical change is not really cricket’s thing. The sport is more of a gelatinous goop that gives to accommodate whatever happens

February 21, 2018 England

Eoin Morgan sees first-class cricket as providing important groundwork for short format success

2 minute readThe rarely-sighted White-Clothed Morgan was thought to have been extinct, but there are now hopes that it could return to its habitat at Lord’s as early as this summer. In a week in which Adil Rashid and Alex Hales both pressed pause on their first-class careers, Morgan has once again

February 20, 2018 County cricket / England

Alex Hales is not ‘turning his back’ on Test or first-class cricket

< 1 minute readNot least because he isn’t currently a Test cricketer. But that’s not really our point. Imagine you have three important things to do today, but you’re kind of pressed for time. If you’re anything like us, you’ll favour the ingenious solution of doing a really half-arsed job on all three.

February 18, 2018 Match report

A report on a 2016 England v Sri Lanka match on which we’ve already reported

2 minute readGed writes: It was the first day of the 2016 Lord’s Test between England and Sri Lanka. I was honoured to have His Majesty, King Cricket, among my guests that day in the Lower Compton – as reported here by His Majesty himself. As the predictable shower of champagne corks