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Author: King Cricket

Otherwise known as Alex Bowden, a lapsed cricket journalist who has written for ESPNCricinfo, wisden.com, Cricket 365, The Cricketer and plenty of other places. Links to some non-cricket writing and a bit more background here.
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

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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

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April 9, 2024 County cricket

We’re mostly talking about Sam Cook this week

2 minute readOnly 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.

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April 8, 2024 County cricket

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

2 minute readSam 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.

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April 3, 2024 County cricket

The seven phases of the 2024 County Championship

5 minute readSay 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?

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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 readJames 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

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March 26, 2024 India

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

4 minute readJust 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

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March 25, 2024 Regulars

A Spartan cricket bat in a UK politics documentary

< 1 minute readSend 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.

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March 21, 2024 England / Features

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

5 minute readJoe Root has been so reliably and frequently excellent that at times it hasn’t even felt that interesting. Today is a celebration of Root’s overlooked brilliance. “Just remember what ol’ Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven

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March 20, 2024 Extras

Thanks to new (and longstanding) King Cricket patrons

2 minute readThose of you who’ve been paying attention and reading to the ends of articles will know that we recently floated the possibility of switching off display advertising for a year. This was predicated on attracting a few new Patreon backers. We can’t remember the exact number. We think it was

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Latest features

  • Zimbabwe in England: six lessons from history for those not old enough to remember this kind of thingMay 20, 2025
  • In praise of the matter-of-fact dynamism of Travis HeadJanuary 30, 2025
  • Mark’s wood: Talking joinery and timber with England’s fastest bowlerJanuary 16, 2025
  • 23 of the best, worst and weirdest cricket moments of 2024January 10, 2025
  • Lord Megachief of Gold 2024January 8, 2025

Read one of these next…

  • Sim Series: Sri Lanka v England – if real sport’s off we’re just going to have to improvise

    Sim Series: Sri Lanka v England – if real sport’s off we’re just going to have to improvise

  • Does the IPL deserve its reputation?

    Does the IPL deserve its reputation?

  • Are we already watching peak Harry Brook?

    Are we already watching peak Harry Brook?

  • Please tell us the secret of managing the very difficult emotions that arise when watching the Pakistan bowling attack against England

    Please tell us the secret of managing the very difficult emotions that arise when watching the Pakistan bowling attack against England

  • Remembering Murali at the Oval in 98: The match when a true one-off revealed the awe-inspiring extent of his powers

    Remembering Murali at the Oval in 98: The match when a true one-off revealed the awe-inspiring extent of his powers

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What we mostly seem to write about

  • England
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  • Other nations
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Latest comments

  1. King Cricket on Jasprit Bumrah Workload Watch… 43.4 oversJune 29, 2025

    Not sure about staying signed in. We're generally logged in, so we don't really get a reader's eye view of…

  2. King Cricket on Jasprit Bumrah Workload Watch… 43.4 oversJune 29, 2025

    There's no word limit. Ramble on, as Led Zep would say.

  3. Impotent Ditherer on Jasprit Bumrah Workload Watch… 43.4 oversJune 29, 2025

    I have a feeling long winded comments about nothing in particular will be a feature of my commenting by the…

  4. Impotent Ditherer on Jasprit Bumrah Workload Watch… 43.4 oversJune 29, 2025

    Thanks, I have been trawling through the records for a little while, but couldn’t find it. More pertinently to this…

  5. King Cricket on Jasprit Bumrah Workload Watch… 43.4 oversJune 29, 2025

    More on Warne if you feel a bit short changed by that: https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/shane-warne-the-greatest-foe/2022/03/23/

RSS Animals being conspicuously indifferent to cricket

  • A cat continuing to maintain almost ostentatiously conspicuous indifference to cricket
  • Conspicuous indifference to Dan Lawrence’s gyrations from a human being
  • Is Winter (the cat) truly indifferent to cricket?

RSS Match reports

  • Tennises, Black Caps and tie envy at the World Test Championship Final | a match report
  • Blue for Bob Day 2024, England v West Indies at Edgbaston – a match report
  • Daylight Larssony at The Hundred Final – a match report

RSS Cricket bats in unusual places

  • DEVICE NEWS! (A match report being conspicuously indifferent to cricket in an unusual place)
  • A cricket bat in a Pigbag video
  • A Spartan cricket bat in a UK politics documentary

About King Cricket

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Support King Cricket

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Recent Posts

  • Jasprit Bumrah Workload Watch… 43.4 overs
  • The late show: How Josh Tongue (kinda) outbowled Jasprit Bumrah in that Test match
  • Did you see… Harry Brook charge Jasprit Bumrah?
  • Mind fodder: Five things to think about as England take on India in a big ol’ five-Test series
  • If Ollie Pope is metamorphosising into historic Lloyd Pope then which Pope is modern day Lloyd Pope becoming?

Tags

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