King Cricket

July 19, 2021 England / Pakistan

Why Liam Livingstone’s huge six v Pakistan was just about the most satisfying shot ever played and also why it was not

2 minute readIn a world where every shot that drops just over the rope is MASSIVE and the ones that get caught by spectators sitting in the first row are OUT OF THE GROUND, it becomes quite hard to properly acknowledge the shot played by Liam Livingstone off Pakistan’s Haris Rauf at

Netflix’s This Could Go Anywhere with Phil Tufnell and Brendon McCullum – a preview

4 minute readPiss off golf. It is a phenomenon we will never be able to wrap our head around. Cricketers liking and talking about golf. No offence to golf – which is a perfectly decent sport if you want to fake-befriend late-middle-aged men who have the power to give you a promotion

July 14, 2021 England / Features / New Zealand

Five bonkers moments from the 2019 Cricket World Cup final – but which was the most uniquely cricket?

6 minute read2019 Cricket World Cup final, England v New Zealand Cricket is at its very purest and best when it’s completely village; when the bowlers are batting and people are being run-out and everyone has to keep checking the laws and playing regulations because they don’t have the faintest idea what’s

July 14, 2021 England

James Vince and the Gower Law

2 minute readHe can bat, James Vince. That’s half the problem. James Vince innings come in many sizes, but there are only really two types. There are the ones where he’s dismissed and a much smaller number where he isn’t. The latter are tauntingly incomplete. Half-written poems, half-painted landscapes, unfinished symphonies. The

July 12, 2021 England

Did you see… James Vince’s silky, casual departure?

3 minute readIf there’s one thing we can all take from the weekend’s sporting events, it’s that England are an unstoppable winning machine. The various members of England’s one-day squad are currently sitting around their houses doing really not very much at all. And England are still winning. They just can’t stop.

July 8, 2021 England / Pakistan

England’s squad for the Pakistan ODIs doesn’t look that weird

2 minute readEngland have binned an entire one-day international squad and picked a different one. You’d think that might have resulted in some barrel-scraping. But it hasn’t really. Cannon Fodder was the first videogame we can remember that featured near-constant character turnover. It was right there in the name. Jools would get

July 7, 2021 Australia / England

Mute Flower, Rankin the Rancor and Angry Anderson

< 1 minute readSeries two of the Ridiculous Ashes draws to a close this week with a look at the Sydney Test of the 2013/14 series and England’s traditional final-Test-of-an-away-Ashes chaos. This was the match in which Gary Ballance, Boyd Rankin and Scott Borthwick all made their Test debuts. It was also a

July 6, 2021 England

It’s the England Second XI captain we feel sorry for (and also Chris ‘Dante Hicks’ Silverwood)

< 1 minute readYou may have heard that England have had to magic-up a whole new one-day squad for the Pakistan series after the first-choice one was sidelined by a bunch of coronavirus cases. Well done everyone – but that’s the easy bit. “We’re in unprecedented territory, in terms of replacing an entire

July 5, 2021 Regulars

An animal rider being conspicuously indifferent to cricket

< 1 minute readRegular King Cricket correspondent Ged Ladd has some extremely exciting Rob Key news. We are especially pleased with the revelation contained within his final sentence because the activity described is one in which we pride ourself. The knowledge that our hero is also a keen practitioner is deeply gladdening. Regular

July 2, 2021 Australia / England / Features

Who unfurled the funnier bad leave when Darren Gough reduced Australia to 65-8 at the SCG – David Boon or Steve Waugh?

4 minute readWe love an ill-advised leave. We love Darren Gough. We love Australian batsmen ill-advisedly leaving Darren Gough. We’ve just been watching Darren Gough bowling Australia out in the 1994-95 Ashes because, you know, why not? (If you want to gain an insight into the King Cricket editorial/creative process, we were

The answer to Tim’s question is yes.

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…

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