King Cricket

April 21, 2021 England

How will Ed Smith, England national selector, be remembered? We’ll tell you how Ed Smith, England national selector, will be remembered

“How can ideas have a positive and elevating effect on a practical sphere?” said Ed Smith when we played a Financial Times video about him from an entirely random starting point just now. It turned out that, when he said that, Smith was talking about an article he’d read by

April 19, 2021 India

Did you see… Virat Kohli’s vertical clapping?

If Virat Kohli has a defining quality, it is faintly-unnerving intensity. Remember that time he was basically livid about beating Australia? Or all of those very many times when he celebrated a hundred with incandescent rage? We’re if not quite numb to these displays by now, then at least acclimatised

April 16, 2021 Australia / England

Get ready for a ridiculous fucken Ashes

Last month we asked which series we should cover next on our Ridiculous Ashes podcast. The results are in. (The results were in a month ago.) We’re going to be doing the 2013/14 series. We nominated 2009 and 2013 as the other possibilities and for a long time the three

April 14, 2021 Match report

Ged Ladd & Co v Children’s Society XI – match report + wagon wheel

Send 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

April 12, 2021 County cricket

A very obvious argument against tinkering with county cricket

This is not an argument in favour of the status quo. This is not an argument to say never change things. It is just to point out that if you change every single county cricket competition, every single year, there are consequences. The format of county cricket has been tinkered

April 9, 2021 County cricket

Darren Stevens: a quite magnificently durable Wookie of a cricketer

Was there a specific moment when you realised you were no longer young? We’re assuming you’ve realised by now. If you haven’t, we’re sorry to break it to you, but… We remember being highly alarmed the first time we heard Calvin Harris sing, “I’ve got love for you if you

April 8, 2021 Regulars

A cricketer in an unusual place

Send 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. (In fact please, please, please do. No-one sends us any of those and they’re our favourite ones.) Mike writes… While at the excellent

April 6, 2021 County cricket

Things that are not rubbish about the Hundred: Sarah Taylor (+ videos)

Say what you like about the Hundred, but it’s giving us Sarah Taylor when we otherwise wouldn’t have Sarah Taylor. The former England wicketkeeper is returning to professional cricket after joining Welsh Fire, having previously retired from cricket in 2019. We wonder how many times this year we’re going to

April 1, 2021 County cricket

2021 county cricket explained: What are the various competitions and how do they work?

Few things gain complexity the more you try to simplify them. County cricket is an incredible thing. First things first: there are five – count ’em – FIVE different domestic cricket competitions to be contested in 2021. The County Championship The Bob Willis Trophy The One-Day Cup The T20 Blast

March 31, 2021 Regulars

Cricket equipment in an unusual place on the BBC Sport website

Send your pictures of cricket bats and other cricket stuff in unusual places to king@kingcricket.co.uk. Please feel free to deliberately place the cricket thing in the unusual place yourself. Bail-out writes… Difficult financial times are often accompanied by desperate pleas for government subsidy and surprise corporate mergers as old business

Danish Kaneria or Dane Vilas – who is most Danish?

England’s eight most surprising double hundreds since Graham Gooch’s 333

Why it is only now dawning on England fans that their team plays way too many games

Four of the weirdest eight-fors of the last 25 years (plus one nine-for and one ten-for)

Which of James Anderson’s near-identical reverse-swinging clean bowleds from the same over was the better?