King Cricket

May 7, 2024 County cricket

County Championship: Essex lose their way to the top

2 minute readWhat an incredible sport. What an incredible competition. Somerset beat Essex, which somehow resulted in both teams vaulting ahead of Surrey in the County Championship. Essex started the week level on points with Surrey at the top of the table, but defeat took them three (bonus) points ahead. Somerset’s skittlesome

May 2, 2024 England

Does England’s T20 World Cup squad contain enough top-order wicketkeepers?

2 minute readJos Buttler, Jonny Bairstow, Phil Salt: what does that say to you about hard-hitting, top order wicketkeeper-batters? There’s too many of them? That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is people like them – let’s have some more of them. It’s widely acknowledged that

May 1, 2024 County cricket

We’re mostly talking about Essex and Surrey again this week – may as well get used to it

2 minute readWe have now entered Phase 3 of this year’s County Championship and after almost four rounds of matches, only three sides have so far managed a win. Durham have won one, while Essex and Surrey have won two. Durham’s efforts have only earned them fifth place in the table, but

April 29, 2024 England / Features

Raise your glasses: Jack Leach’s three silliest innings

7 minute readAs a bowler, Jack Leach is not at all silly. He is diligent, consistent and reliable, none of which are silly qualities. And because he is first and foremost a bowler, this encourages the notion that Leach is somehow not a silly cricketer, which is entirely incorrect. Give Jack Leach

April 23, 2024 Match report

The night before the 2005 Edgbaston Test (a match report)

3 minute readSend your match reports to king@kingcricket.co.uk. We’re only really interested in your own experience, so if it’s a professional match, on no account mention the cricket itself. (But if it’s an amateur match, feel free to go into excruciating detail.) Ged Ladd writes… Since the end of the last century,

April 22, 2024 County cricket

We’re mostly talking about Dan Lawrence this week

3 minute readA single player like Dan Lawrence moving from one club to another is quite a big deal. That might seem odd in a world where the biggest cricket tournament won’t be permitting its teams to keep any more than five players from their squads at the end of this season,

April 19, 2024 Australia / England

What have been the most ridiculous Ashes moments of the last 50 years?

2 minute readSimple question. When you think of the most ridiculous Ashes moments, what comes to mind? If you’ve ever dipped into the podcast we do with Dan Liebke, you’ll know that our definition of ‘ridiculous’ is pretty broad. Ridiculously good, ridiculously bad, ridiculously weird – they all count. So what comes

April 17, 2024 Regulars

A cricket bat in a Pigbag video

2 minute readSend your pictures of cricket bats and other cricket stuff in unusual places to king@kingcricket.co.uk. Please consider putting the cricket thing in the unusual place yourself. We like those ones. Inveterate King Cricket contributor Ged Ladd writes… One of the joys of revisiting the popular music of my youth online

April 16, 2024 County cricket

Deadly Kookaburras: We’re mostly talking about Durham following-on this week

4 minute readPoor pathetic Durham could only muster 517 all out in their first innings against Warwickshire and were therefore invited to follow-on. Fortunately, they managed to escape with a draw after Matt Potts – yes, that Matt Potts – made 149 not out. It is safe to say that in its

April 11, 2024 County cricket

An update on county cricket ground names (and a couple of suggestions)

2 minute readSix years ago we handed out a bunch of awards to various county cricket grounds, in recognition of the terrible names they’d been saddled with as a result of sponsorship. Most of these names have since changed, but some of the new names are quite funny or potentially funny, so