King Cricket

August 25, 2021 England / India

Who will provoke whom into provoking them in the third Test

< 1 minute readWe’re not saying either England or India goes out there looking for a fight. We are however saying that quite a few of the players have a keen eye for provocation and could probably uncover a bit of it even if they were sentenced to solitary confinement. “It just showed

August 23, 2021 Match report

A report from the first day of the Hundred at the Oval

4 minute readThis is our second match report from the inaugural season of the Hundred. Here’s the first. King Cricket match reports focus on what it was like to be at the game – not the match itself. Miriam writes… The afternoon started off slightly stressfully because my husband had a meeting

August 20, 2021 County cricket / Match report

A report from the first day of the Hundred at Lord’s

3 minute readThis is the first of two match reports from the inaugural season of the Hundred. Here’s the second one. King Cricket match reports focus on what it was like to be at the game – not the match itself. Regular King Cricket contributor, Ged Ladd, writes… Daisy and I resolved

August 18, 2021 England / India

Will Sam Curran ever get the chance to prove himself not good enough?

2 minute readSam Curran is a weird one. You’d be unlikely to pick him purely as a batsman. You’d be unlikely to pick him purely as a bowler. You wouldn’t pick him if he were a right-armer. You wouldn’t pick him if he were a few years older. But there he is

August 16, 2021 England / India

Beware the melatonin coursing through England’s veins

2 minute readThere is a very good chance this article about England’s day five capitulation is not biologically sound. We’re pretty sure it’s cricketally accurate however. The second Test was won and lost at some point during a morning of pointlessly bouncing Jasprit Bumrah. It’s a hard moment to pin down precisely,

August 16, 2021 England / India

It didn’t rain, it was just Cheteshwar Pujara

2 minute readMuch is said about Cheteshwar Pujara – we’ve written a lot ourself – but we’re not sure anyone’s ever talked about his ability to persuade you that it rained when it didn’t. The way it went down was like this. Late afternoon we got a message from King Cricket reader

August 14, 2021 England / India

Bairstow and Moeen remind us how hard it is to resist a yo-yo trick

< 1 minute readLast week we suggested that the adaptability of Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali was a key reason why they had become yo-yos for England. There are two sides to this. Firstly, the fact that the two men can each perform so many ‘roles’ means that Test openings materialise more frequently

August 13, 2021 India

KL Rahul: “Hello Lord’s!”

2 minute readKL Rahul successfully made it to the middle at Lord’s, batted a bit and then just about successfully made it back to the changing rooms again. As Tom Evans points out, it’s a long way. Here’s Rahul’s epic journey. “Well, we’ve kept them waiting long enough. Let’s do it to

August 10, 2021 England

Moeen Ali and England’s yo-yos

3 minute readIf there’s one thing we know about yo-yos, it’s that if you send one out, it tends to come back. If we know another thing about yo-yos, it’s that sometimes they get all tangled when they’re fully extended and don’t actually come back and then you have to spend ages

August 9, 2021 England / India

If England’s top three sets the tone, exactly what tone is it setting?

3 minute readStarts are important. Starts set everyone’s mood and so shape everything that’s to come. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Abattoir Blues album starts with two bars that sound like the climax of an encore. Nick then forcefully instructs us to, ‘get ready for love,’ and by 12 seconds, there’s

This paragraph casually thrown into cricinfo's WI/BD Test live text is a cracker: By the way, CWI has said that…

You'd have to check The Alternative Test World Championship. https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/but-what-about-the-alternative-test-cricket-world-championship-who-holds-that-title/2023/08/08/

NOW he's lost his edge.

WTF is going on in Perth... Still, Labuschagne got 50% more runs in much less time this innings. Good to…

Cox out. Hey everyone, I said ‘Cox out!’

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