King Cricket

May 13, 2021 Australia

Why it would apparently be a “tragedy” if Steve Smith didn’t get to be Australia captain again

2 minute readInternational cricket’s longest-serving stand-in Test captain, Tim Paine (oh come on, he is), has been talking about whether Steve Smith could one day replace him. Paine told Cricinfo that when he first came into the Australia Test team, Smith was, “growing into that role and getting better and better. Then

May 12, 2021 Match report

Yard and beach cricket in April – a match report

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. Conversely, if it’s an amateur match, please go into excruciating detail. King Cricket reader and regular contributor Sam

May 10, 2021 England / India

Rahul Dravid makes a pretty good point about India’s Test tour of England

2 minute readWe tend to think of the ‘bio-bubble’ imposed on touring cricketers as an oppressive, negative thing. But there is an upside – at least from a purely cricket point of view. Thanks to the way the world has been this last year or so, it’s perhaps a little easier for

May 6, 2021 India

So who is ‘playing for humanity’ now then?

< 1 minute readThe thing about talking grandiose self-serving bollocks is that not only does it expose your fundamental hollowness, but the fundamental meaninglessness of what you said may well also be exposed. Late last month, as the IPL scrabbled towards its inevitable postponement, the most eye-poppingly you-don’t-even-believe-this-yourself justification for continuing came from

May 4, 2021 County cricket

Making sense of the County Championship 40% of the way through the group stage

2 minute readIt’s very early May and it basically feels like winter, but we’re already well on the way to establishing the three divisions that will comprise the second phase of this year’s County Championship. (Here’s an explanation of how the Championship and other competitions will work this year.) 18 teams is

May 1, 2021 England / Features / South Africa

Why ‘overnight’ is such an important part of a five-day Test match

2 minute readWhenever a Test is decided late on the fifth day, there’s much talk about how that kind of tension and excitement wouldn’t happen with four-day Tests. It’s half true. This is why. If you move a deadline, you don’t negate it. Even if a Test match has no fifth day,

April 30, 2021 India

Prithvi Shaw hit six fours in an over and part of us thinks that’s better than six sixes in an over

2 minute readLook, obviously six fours in an over is not better than six sixes in an over. But also it is. That’s what we’re going to argue here. Delhi Capitals were chasing 155 against Kolkata Knight Riders yesterday and it’s fair to say they got off to a pretty solid start.

April 29, 2021 Extras

King Cricket email news

< 1 minute readA sizeable proportion of you are signed up for our emails. We’ve good news and bad news about that. The bad news is that the email sending service we’ve always used – which has generally worked pretty well – ends in July, so we’re having to switch to another one.

April 28, 2021 County cricket

We’re mostly talking about Matt Parkinson this week

2 minute readMatt Parkinson bowled someone with a ball-of-the-century-esque leg break earlier this month. He is also the man responsible for the slowest delivery in the entire CricViz database. Last week he took 7-126 in Lancashire’s innings victory over Kent, meaning he now has 15 wickets at 16.80 this season – despite

April 26, 2021 Australia / England / Features / Pakistan

Three great bowlers’ run-ups – but do you have a favourite?

9 minute readCan we talk about bowlers’ run-ups? We’ve picked out three great ones. They’re not necessarily our favourites, but we feel like each one says something in particular about how bowlers get to the crease and what we as viewers feel as they’re doing so. But before that, please can we