6 minute read There aren’t many things in cricket more entertaining than a duck. A batter slowly walks out to try and make some runs and then slowly walks back again having failed to do so. It’s a miniature tragedy. Great ducks come in many different flavours. There’s the duck you were expecting
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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
Continue readingThe 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
Continue readingJofra 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
Continue readingHaving 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.
Continue readingBen 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
Continue readingA 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
Continue readingAshwin, 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
Continue readingThe 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
Continue readingSix 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
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