King Cricket

September 17, 2020 Features / India

Let’s use Ken Nordine’s word jazz album ‘Colors’ to work out who’s going to win the 2020 IPL

5 minute readIf there’s a simple and obvious way of predicting the 2020 IPL that for some reason hasn’t yet been done, it’s this… We’re going to look at all of the team kits; we’re going to establish the main colour of each one; and then we’re going to listen to what

September 15, 2020 England

Adil Rashid and the art of lofting the ball over backward point

2 minute readWhen we wrote about how Adil Rashid is almost as good a batsman as Stuart Broad the other day, a number of people saw this as some kind of slur. Maybe they misinterpreted our words because they for some inexplicable reason do not believe that Stuart Broad is a quite

September 12, 2020 England

Adil Rashid is almost as good a batsman as Stuart Broad

2 minute readStuart Broad is the greatest batsman in the history of cricket. Everybody knows that. What people don’t know is that Adil Rashid is almost as good. One of the great tragedies of England having loads of bowlers who can bat is that fans very rarely get to catch a glimpse

September 10, 2020 Regulars

A cricket pad in an unusual place/a baby in an unusual cricket place

2 minute readSend your pictures of cricket bats and other cricket stuff in unusual places to king@kingcricket.co.uk. Feel free to put the cricket thing in the unusual place yourself. Miriam writes: Here is a photo of my new baby daughter Clementine in a cricket pad. She is being conspicuously indifferent to cricket,

September 8, 2020 England

The weight of being Ian Bell finally takes its toll

3 minute readAs Ian Bell retires from first-class cricket, let’s talk about a player whose Test record was plenty good enough but whose technique honestly left us kind of cold. Ian Bell was player of the series in a 3-0 Ashes win. Can we just state that first before we get into

September 5, 2020 Australia / England / Uncategorized

If a cricket match is played and no-one is there to boo David Warner then how can we be sure that Australia truly lost?

< 1 minute readThe First Crowd-Free T20 International between England and Australia saw the home team engineer a position where they would have to play very well and Australia very badly to secure their desired result. England did their bit and so too did Australia, in large part thanks to David Warner’s nondescript

September 2, 2020 Match report

Headingley 2019 unwatched – a kind of match report

2 minute readWe always enjoy a tale of trying to follow the cricket without actually watching the cricket. Today, day four of the 2019 Headingley Ashes Test… Sam writes: The following is a true story. I removed my headphones, dusted down my grass-stained trousers and skipped giddily back to the car, children

August 30, 2020 England / Features

When Mike Atherton was run-out for 99 – was this the worst ‘no’ in the history of cricket?

6 minute readThe most powerful ‘no’ in film is the one in Rise of the Planet of the Apes when Caesar reveals that he is far more than a “damn dirty ape”. It happens a surprisingly long way into the film, which allows for quite a lot of emotional build-up. It’s well-timed

August 27, 2020 England / Pakistan

Why Dom Sibley’s bowling deserves the very best commentary

2 minute readDom Sibley’s first-class bowling average is 67.75. The remarkable thing about this is that it means he has taken a wicket – four of them, to be precise. On the fifth day of an intolerably moist match against Pakistan, Dom Sibley had his first bowl in Test cricket. He bowled

August 25, 2020 England / Features / Pakistan

Behold the rich tapestry of emotions when Stuart Broad dropped yet another catch off Jimmy Anderson but then ran the batsman out

5 minute readIf England’s 2020 Test summer is remembered for anything, it will not be for the return of BBC highlights, Ben Stokes doing absolutely everything against the West Indies or the bizarre sights and sounds of matches played without crowds. No, if England’s 2020 Test summer is remembered for anything it