King Cricket

January 16, 2023 Extras

In search of a T20 shallowness metric: Is there a quick and easy way to judge the quality of a franchise match?

5 minute read There are an awful lot of T20 franchise leagues these days. It’s hard to keep up. If you want to work out whether a new one is worth following, the absolute last thing you’d want to do is actually watch a match. So is there a quicker and easier way

January 13, 2023 Match report

The government pilot post-social-distancing 2021 Edgbaston Test – a match report

3 minute read Send 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 submitted this match report what might be termed

January 11, 2023 England

Jofra Archer’s back

2 minute read As in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. So what does this mean? It’s almost two years since he last played for England. Where does he fit in these days? Yesterday, Jofra Archer made his return for Mumbai Indians Cape Town – almost literally a franchise within a

January 9, 2023 Australia

Having David Warner play Nathan Lyon at the Test Match board game seems a perfectly reasonable way to promote series two of The Test on Amazon Prime

3 minute read Say what you like about tax-dodging symbol of the horrors of modern global commerce, Amazon, it knows how to promote a documentary series about the Australia Test cricket team. Series one of Amazon Prime’s The Test was notable for footage of Justin Langer kicking a bin over, among other things.

January 5, 2023 England / Features

Ben Stokes: Lord Megachief of Gold 2022

6 minute read Our annual Lord Megachief of Gold award is the highest honour in cricket. The title is recognition of performance over the previous calendar year. Here are all the winners. Up until now we’ve always recognised players for their batting or their bowling or both. This year, something else has swayed

January 3, 2023 Match report

A ChatGPT match report for day one of the 2023 County Championship

2 minute read Ged Ladd instructed ChatGPT to write up, three months in advance, the first day of 2023 cricket at Lord’s. The instructions for “The First Day Of The Cricket Season” read, “comedy, 300 words, on no account mention the cricket itself”. Ged supplied ChatGPT with three relevant examples of Ged’s match

December 31, 2022 Australia / Bangladesh / India / New Zealand / Pakistan / South Africa

Ashwin, Warner and run-rates – a recap of the 2022 Boxing Day Tests

2 minute read We previewed the Boxing Day Tests. We may as well take a look at what happened in them. Australia v South Africa Signs of an upturn for South Africa, who finally passed 200 for the first time in many attempts. Their second innings 204 all out was enough to secure

December 22, 2022 Extras

The 2022 Festivus holding page: The Boxing Day Tests

2 minute read A few years ago we hit on a characteristically half-arsed approach to covering the Boxing Day Tests. We flag what matches are taking place in advance, wish everyone a happy Festivus and then cross our fingers and hope that something passing for informative reportage materialises in the comments section. It

December 21, 2022 England / Features

Six things older than Rehan Ahmed

4 minute read Last week Rehan Ahmed became England’s youngest debutant and soon after the youngest men’s Test debutant to take a five-wicket haul. But just how young is he really? Age is famously just a number (in this case 18), so maybe we can get a clearer perspective on his youth by

December 19, 2022 England / Pakistan

Rehan Ahmed: first look in Test cricket

3 minute read We don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway. We have a track record of getting overexcited about 18-year-old leg-spinning all-rounders. It worked out last time though, so the way we see it, it makes perfect sense to get completely overexcited again.

Our failure to exist for a couple of those early series means we'd be grateful for info about and assistance…

Do you really mean 50 years, KC? I have quite clear memories from 1975, but some of those stories/shenanigans kicked…

And Rory Burns.

Probably not thought about much of this since it happened, but it all feels instantly familiar, like I lived through…

You could do a thing on ridiculously portentous first balls of the ashes eg Slater cutting defreitas for 4 in…

Five times Joe Root made a Test hundred and no-one really noticed

How popular are all these Not-Quite-The-IPL franchise leagues actually likely to be?

What has been the most improbable feat by an England cricketer in India?

21 of the best, worst and weirdest cricket moments of 2023

The 1981 Ridiculous Ashes