King Cricket

March 17, 2021 Match report

Players (of the left) v Gentlemen (of the right) – match report + wagon wheel

2 minute readSend your match reports to king@kingcricket.co.uk. We’re only interested in what it was like to be at the game, so if it’s a professional match, on no account mention the cricket itself. Equally, if it’s an amateur match, please go into excruciating detail. Herbert Ackgrass (the official cricket biographer of

March 15, 2021 England / India

Why Eoin Morgan got his first-choice team against India when Joe Root didn’t

5 minute readEngland are finally putting out their first team. And people aren’t happy. Speaking ahead of the T20 series against India, Eoin Morgan came as close as anyone has so far to articulating the principles underpinning England’s 2021 squad rotation policy. (We’re not going to call it a ‘controversial’ squad rotation

March 12, 2021 England

Who is whispering to Michael Vaughan about Jofra Archer?

4 minute readWe used to work with a girl who had access to a secret weather report. “It’s going to be 40 degrees on Thursday,” she would say. And she would state this as a fact. How often is it 40 degrees in the United Kingdom? The answer is never. Armed with

March 10, 2021 England / Features

Why it is only now dawning on England fans that their team plays way too many games

8 minute readTurns out people don’t like squad rotation. Not when you call it that anyway. Test Match Special can be a good place to gauge which way the wind’s blowing – and not just because it’s regularly interrupted by the shipping forecast. Earlier this week, Jonathan Agnew wrote a column in

March 8, 2021 Australia / England

Which ridiculous Ashes series should we cover next?

< 1 minute readAs we’re sure you’re aware, the Ridiculous Ashes – the parallel England v Australia competition we first ran over at Cricket 365 for the 2019 series – is now a podcast. Series 1 was about the 1997 Ashes and we thought you’d like a say on which series we cover

March 5, 2021 England / India

The Rishabh Pant campaign for longer Test series

2 minute readHere’s a thing we noticed about Rishabh Pant. He’s terrible in adverts. Now here’s another thing we noticed about Rishabh Pant. In 2018, Pant made 114 in the fifth and final Test at the Oval. In 2019, he made 159 not out in the fourth and final Test at the

March 4, 2021 England / India

How Dom Bess has massively improved his game since he last played

2 minute readDom Bess didn’t play the last two games. Joe Root said that he had used the time to work on a few things. We saw some evidence of that today. We’re not quite sure what it is, but we seem to be writing about Dom Bess a lot this winter.

March 3, 2021 Afghanistan / England / India / New Zealand / Zimbabwe

The Dom Bess situation, Afghanistan on your telly + more | Mop-up of the day

3 minute readThe England men’s team are about to play the fourth Test against India, with Dom Bess apparently set to get another game. Meanwhile the England women’s team have started beating New Zealand in a new format, while Afghanistan and Zimbabwe are trying to get in on the current trend for

March 1, 2021 Cricket computer games | reviews, previews and downloads | PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, Wii

A review of an old Xbox 360 cricket game

2 minute readSemi-regular King Cricket contributor Sam sent us a review for a game he initially said was International Cricket Captain 2020, then clarified was ICC 2010, but which actually turned out to be International Cricket 2010 – a game that we’ve already reviewed. Videogame developers are always mystifyingly keen to use

February 26, 2021 England / India

What Shane Warne’s bowling tactics tell us about spin and the pink ball

3 minute readShane Warne said he always used to try and really rip a leg break when he first came on to bowl. This wasn’t to try and dismiss the batsman – although sometimes it did – it was really just to sow a seed of doubt. Warne wanted to maximise the

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