King Cricket

June 16, 2026 England

One way or another, England’s quick bowlers are letting them down, which apparently means they have to drop spin bowler Shoaib Bashir again

3 minute readOf the England bowlers who won the first Test for England, Ben Stokes, Gus Atkinson and Ollie Robinson are all, for one reason or another, unavailable for selection for the second Test. In now time honoured fashion, Brendon McCullum has weighed this pace bowling shortfall and concluded the best way

June 10, 2026 England

Retiring because he stayed up past his bedtime would be a silly but appropriate end to Ben Stokes’ England career

2 minute readOver the last 24 hours, we’ve been steering our exasperation towards amusement through the simple tactic of mentally rewriting all references to England curfews so that they’re instead about bedtimes. The two things are much the same, after all. Doing this swap is funny and it also helps highlight how

June 9, 2026 England

What is the most staggering aspect of Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson’s involvement in a nightclub “incident”?

3 minute readHistory has changed. If you google “Ben Stokes nightclub incident,” you now see an entirely different Ben Stokes nightclub incident than the one that’s been at the top of the results page for the last nine years. If you’re catching up on the details, this new one – which we’ll

June 5, 2026 England / New Zealand

So how tall does Shoaib Bashir feel right now? (Presumably not 10 feet tall)

4 minute readIt’s become one of the great, weird, modern cricket clichés that Brendon McCullum has the ability to make players feel they are an incorrect height. (Invariably taller, invariably 10 feet.) But he doesn’t always make them feel that, does he? We’d be interested to know what height Shoaib Bashir currently

June 3, 2026 England

If Brendon McCullum does get England to play ‘smart cricket’ what does that mean for Harry Brook whose superpower is very much ‘daft cricket’?

3 minute readIn the wake of England’s most successful Ashes tour for 15 years, it was widely agreed that some England players needed to play smarter and so that is what Brendon McCullum has promised to deliver henceforth. Some players didn’t need to play smarter though. One in particular has built an

June 1, 2026 Regulars

A cricket book at a castle

< 1 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. We took The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments to Warwick Castle during October half-term. It seemed a little nonplussed by the castle

May 29, 2026 Ireland / New Zealand

Chapeau, New Zealand – not many teams come to Ireland and win a Test match

< 1 minute readAn historic day. Not many teams get the better of Ireland in Test cricket. New Zealand today inflicted only their second ever defeat in home conditions and their first by an innings. Extraordinary stuff. Even more amazingly, New Zealand had never before got the better of Ireland, home or away.

May 27, 2026 Ireland / New Zealand

Can the 1980s tell us anything about the first Test match of summer?

2 minute readNeither Ireland nor New Zealand play too many Test matches and the Irish players don’t even have a domestic red ball structure to fall back on. You may therefore conclude that there hasn’t been any recent first-class cricket from which we might weigh form ahead of this week’s Test match.

May 21, 2026 Pakistan

Can anyone get a grip on the attenuating unpredictability of the Pakistan Test team?

3 minute readPakistan play three Tests in England later this summer. You can never be entirely sure what you’re going to get from Pakistan, but it does feel like the range of unpredictability has been narrowing for a good few years now; the moments of unexpected brilliance growing ever fewer and further

May 14, 2026 England

Is Ollie Pope still in the same galaxy as the England Test team?

4 minute readThere are winners and losers with every England Test squad announcement, but the first one after an Ashes tour tends to feature bigger, clearer signposts for the years ahead. Ollie Pope looks to be one of the less immediately obvious casualties of the greater disloyalty Rob Key promised us. Looking

It's Wayback Wednesday. Last time England played New Zealand at The Oval was the summer of 1999. Daisy and I…

I might have picked a spinner for the Oval, but not Bashir. The obvious choice would have been Rehan, batting…

...on the other hand if your job is to be an athlete then not drinking into the early hours is…

Kane retiring is really big for me. It makes me wonder if i really want those flights to Melbourne and…

Word reaches me that Kane Williamson is not listed to play for The London Spirit either. Perhaps he is returning…

Did you see… Harry Brook’s first ball in Melbourne? Unquestionably the 2025/26 Ashes’ finest moment

Sky Sports has boiled its Ashes coverage down to its purest and greatest form: Mike Atherton and Nasser Hussain standing there talking about what’s gone wrong

The 2019 Ridiculous Ashes (podcast)

The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments is definitely out now – you should buy it for someone! (Possibly yourself)

51. Michael Vaughan Declines A Crushing