King Cricket

April 19, 2024 Australia / England

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

2 minute read Simple 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 read Send 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 read Poor 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 read Six 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

April 9, 2024 County cricket

We’re mostly talking about Sam Cook this week

2 minute read Only one team successfully beat both the weather and the opposition this week and Sam Cook’s 10-73 was Essex’s most significant contribution. Those figures were also a pretty handy rebuttal to anyone who suggested Cook was a bowler guaranteed to suffer at the listless hands of the slumberous Kookaburra ball.

April 8, 2024 County cricket

It’s the time of year when we write about Sam Northeast

2 minute read Sam Northeast finished last season with 166 not out. He started this one with 335 not out. It wasn’t his highest score for Glamorgan. In 2022, he made 410 not out. These are hugely impressive feats; the kinds of feats that get you talked about as a possible England batter.

April 3, 2024 County cricket

The seven phases of the 2024 County Championship

5 minute read Say what you like about the County Championship, it doesn’t stay still for long. Ever-changing, never static – is it carefully calibrated to appeal to modern, smartphone-eroded attention-spans? Or is it more the kind of spoilt, overworked artwork you end up with when you just can’t stop fiddling with something?

March 27, 2024 County cricket / England

Life after Stuart Broad: What did England’s next lot of quick bowlers get up to this winter?

5 minute read James Anderson and Stuart Broad made their debuts in their early 20s and then just carried on playing until they were middle-aged. This means the players we might ordinarily think of as constituting ‘the next generation’ are mostly now on the cusp of retirement themselves. England have however given Test

March 26, 2024 India

In praise of the IPL’s very many contrived and meaningless post-match awards

4 minute read Just for a minute there, we thought the IPL’s Fair Play Award was the only one that wasn’t sponsored. We wondered what that might say, if it were the case. However, after about two minutes of looking into it, we realised that nothing could ever be so simple as one

March 25, 2024 Regulars

A Spartan cricket bat in a UK politics documentary

< 1 minute read Send your pictures of cricket bats and other cricket stuff in unusual places to king@kingcricket.co.uk. It is more than okay to put the cricket thing in the unusual place yourself if you want. In fact we urge you to do precisely that. Sam writes… A Tuesday evening, BBC Two, post-watershed.

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…

I am not a podcast-listener so I'm not sure whether you've covered 2001, but I'd like to draw your attention…

Almost brings a tear to the eye at times, that song.

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