King Cricket

July 3, 2018 Australia

The Steve Smith headline generator

2 minute readSteve Smith was spotted having a beer in New York last week. Several newspapers ran really stupid stories about it with really stupid headlines. We were going to write about the stupidest one but then we forgot what it was and they also deleted the story. Fortunately, we’ve now remembered,

June 29, 2018 England

A(nother) call for more downtime

< 1 minute readFor players mostly, but also for fans. Our latest Wisden piece delves into how Jonathan Trott went from his normal run-gathering self in early 2013 to down and out by the end of the year. It also takes a quick look at how his Warwickshire team-mate ended up worn down

June 27, 2018 County cricket

How about a nine-ball over? Would that be too much for a fast bowler?

2 minute readThe prospects of there being a fresh tactical dimension in The Hundred have been all but dashed after Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) chairman Daryl Mitchell said that no-one was really up for the 10-ball over because it seems kind of tiring. Speaking to The Mail, he said: “People who are

June 26, 2018 Features / India

What is it like to be Virat Kohli?

8 minute readCaptain of his country, the best batsman in the world, tens of millions of social media followers and filthy rich – what is it like to be Virat Kohli? Well barring some sort of Freaky Friday body swap development, we’re just going to have to try and imagine. But we

June 21, 2018 England / New Zealand / South Africa

“Our bowling is an area of concern”

< 1 minute readSo said South Africa captain Dane van Niekerk after her team had conceded a world record 216-1 in a T20 against New Zealand and then a few hours later conceded 250-3 against England. “An area of concern” is a great way of putting it. “An absolute liability” is just that

June 20, 2018 Australia / England

Are England the ultimate flat pitch one-day side?

3 minute readOn June 19, 2018, England took the Australia bowling attack apart as if it were a giant Lego penis and grandma was coming over. The dismantling was rapid, efficient and utterly comprehensive. They made 481-6, the highest total in the history of one-day internationals. We strongly disagree with the idea

June 19, 2018 England

It didn’t always seem so obvious that Liam Plunkett wasn’t Sajid Mahmood

4 minute readThere was a time when Liam Plunkett was spoken about in much the same way as Sajid Mahmood. Then there was another time when Liam Plunkett was spoken about in much the same way as Sajid Mahmood. It seems safe to assume that it won’t happen a third time –

June 15, 2018 Afghanistan / Extras

Afghanistan haven’t scored too many runs, but that’s not really the point at this stage, is it?

< 1 minute readRemember Out of the Ashes? It’s a documentary about Afghanistan’s journey “from war to the World Cup”. We reviewed it here and thought it was rather wonderful. It strikes us that it could do with an update because Afghanistan are a Test team now. This is a highly astonishing state

June 12, 2018 England

Why aren’t the big teams embarrassed about losing to smaller teams?

2 minute readScotland’s obvious delight at beating England at the weekend was in no way matched by the anger of the England fans or the embarrassment of the players. It’s not an exact mathematical thing, but normally in sport you’d expect similar sorts of weight on both sides. Why was that not

June 8, 2018 England

Will Jos Buttler prove that the best Test teams contain the best T20 players?

2 minute readThat’s a terrible headline. It labels Jos Buttler a T20 player when a key aspect of the point we’re about to make is that players shouldn’t be categorised. Over at Wisden, we’ve picked up almost exactly where we left off earlier in the week, arguing that England’s Test team would