King Cricket

Fast bowling: County cricket’s diesels and the unprepared Test batters they create

3 minute readIn the wake of England’s Ashes failings, there’s been a lot of talk about how the County Championship is played on pitches that encourage medium-pacers. Pitches are not the big problem. There was a good recent piece about county pitches by CricBuzz’s Rob Johnston. The overly-reduced version of that article

January 9, 2022 Australia / England / Extras

In praise of the tense final hour of a drawn Test match

2 minute readWe’ve said it many times before. Test cricket can offer something that no other sport can. You can’t have a tense hour in a football match because it’s two thirds of the game. In a Test match, 60 minutes can be a tight finish. In a five-day match, everyone’s got

January 7, 2022 Australia / England

It’s been so long since Jonny Bairstow made a Test hundred he almost forgot to roar

2 minute readOne of our favourite things about Jonny Bairstow Test hundreds – second only to their existence really – is how he celebrates them. Jonny Bairstow is a pretty fiery hundred-celebrator. Before today, the last time Bairstow made a Test ton was in November 2018 in Sri Lanka. On that occasion

January 5, 2022 Features / New Zealand

Kane Williamson: Lord Megachief of Gold 2020/2021

3 minute readOur annual Lord Megachief of Gold award is the highest honour in cricket. The title is recognition of performance over the previous calendar year. Here are all the winners. Two things to note before we get into this. (1) We’re looking at a two-year timespan here after Lord Megachief Postponed

January 4, 2022 Australia / County cricket / England / Features / India / New Zealand / West Indies

17 of the best, worst and weirdest cricket moments of 2021

7 minute readHere is a bunch of stuff that happened in 2021. It is not an exhaustive list, because an exhaustive list chronicling the activities of multiple people across an entire year would take far longer than a year to read. It is just a selection of striking cricket moments from the

December 28, 2021 Australia / England

More cricket: A story of mediocre batters pushed too hard and the collective burnout of a not-great England side

5 minute readIf you’re really going to turn the heat up and cook a sauce for quite some time, you need plenty of good stuff in the pan to begin with. If you haven’t, you’ll end up with a bitter-tasting charred sticky goo that’s no good to anyone. England are different gravy.

December 23, 2021 Australia / England / India / South Africa

The 2021 Festivus holding page: The Boxing Day Tests and ancient Ashes

< 1 minute readA few years ago we hit on a suitably half-arsed approach to covering the Boxing Day Tests. We flag what matches are taking place in advance, wish everyone a happy Festivus and then leave you all to cobble together a kind of fragmentary, disjointed log of any major developments in

December 21, 2021 Australia / England

Should England have rocked up without a plan? Were they mentally exhausted before they even began?

3 minute readWe’re not lodging this as an official criticism. More just raising it as something to think about. How much does England’s insane obsession with tours Down Under drain the players before they’ve even arrived? It was Jos Buttler’s first innings dismissal in Adelaide that made us think of this (and

December 20, 2021 Australia / England

Jos Buttler took some fine catches and made a double ball hundred but all we’ll remember is the terrible drop and when he trod on his stumps

2 minute readHistory is not just written by the victors. When it’s a particularly bad defeat, the losers make doubly certain to note down all the really awful moments too. Jos Buttler made a fourth innings double ball hundred in Adelaide. In a series where England have so far displayed almost zero

December 16, 2021 Australia / England

Maybe England should have picked a sixth right-arm fast-medium bowler

2 minute readAs a parent of young children, we encounter our fair share of repetition. Green bottles, speckled frogs, monkeys on a bed, little men in a flying saucer. Nothing could prepare us for England’s second Test bowling attack though. If there is one thing England have been sure of these last