King Cricket

What Ben Stokes, Jack Leach and Headingley 2019 tell us about Test cricket

5 minute readEngland v Australia, third Test, day four It’s six or out… … It’s six! Jonathan Agnew, Test Match Special Have you seen No Country For Old Men? You should watch No Country For Old Men. No Country For Old Men is a striking and excellent film and while the ending

January 6, 2021 Regulars

The Ridiculous Ashes is now a podcast

< 1 minute readDo you remember the Ridiculous Ashes? It was a thing we did with Dan Liebke over at Cricket 365 for the 2019 series. It’s an alternative trophy that is awarded to the side that produces the most hilarious and absurd cricket across an Ashes series. Just to let you all

January 4, 2021 Match report

Cricket on a tea estate near Darjeeling – a match report

3 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

January 2, 2021 England / New Zealand

Lord Megachiefs on Hold

3 minute readAt this time of year, we normally bestow the greatest honour in cricket by naming Lord Megachief of Gold. It’s a title that is earned through freakish cricket performance across the previous calendar year, but after much rumination we have concluded that 2020 wasn’t actually a proper year. There were

December 29, 2020 Australia / India

Ajinkya Rahane and India’s net gains

2 minute readIndia got past Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood bowling with the new ball and lo, they won the Test match. That’s reductive – but then so’s concluding a team can’t bat when it gets bowled out for 36. Ajinkya Rahane made the most obviously telling contribution, run out for 112

December 23, 2020 Extras

The Festivus holding page: The Boxing Day Tests and some Ian Austin news

2 minute readWe can’t generally be arsed reporting on Boxing Day Tests in any way promptly, but it is nevertheless one of the most important times in the cricket year. This is a quandary, but a few years ago we came up with an approach that we’ve since tried to pass off

December 19, 2020 Australia / India

Why India’s 36 all out was a one-dimensional effort in the field of collapses

3 minute readIf you’ve ever seen The Perfect Storm, you’ll know that quite a lot of things go wrong in it. The Perfect Storm is a film about fishing, starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and quite a few other people you know. At one point Wahlberg is bitten by a shark. A

December 17, 2020 Extras

The Ultimate Kricket Challenge looks delightfully half-baked and bonkers and Kevin Pietersen seems to be at risk of being set on fire

3 minute readHere’s a thing. Six lads that you’ve heard of are going to play a one-on-one form of cricket called the Ultimate Kricket Challenge this Christmas and New Year. (Or at least that’s when it’s going to be broadcast on Star Sports and Disney Hotstar.) The lads in question are Rashid

December 16, 2020 New Zealand

Kyle Jamieson looks a useful and very slightly frightening bowler to have about the place

< 1 minute readIn Tim Southee and Trent Boult, New Zealand have textbook new ball bowlers who disagree on which arm to use. This is a useful starting point when trying to bowl out the opposition. After that, they have the finest old ball bowler around, The Great Neil Wagner. Wagner is a

December 14, 2020 England / Features

Let’s try and identify England’s purest and greatest bits and pieces cricketer

8 minute readA bits-and-pieces cricketer is a player who wouldn’t warrant a place in the side as a batsman or a bowler but somehow gets picked anyway based on cumulative all-round ability. Let’s try and find England’s purest and greatest bits and pieces cricketer. Before we get into this, you may be

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