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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 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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March 18, 2024 England

Who should be England’s wicketkeeper against the West Indies in July? You have to choose NOW

4 minute readBeing a cricket fan isn’t about following players’ development, weighing their ability at different points in their career. Being a sports fan is about picking a favourite early on and sticking with them, contriving explanations why they’re actually the best, even when they’re performing terribly. There is plenty of cricket

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Latest features

  • Did you see… Harry Brook’s first ball in Melbourne? Unquestionably the 2025/26 Ashes’ finest momentJanuary 13, 2026
  • Sky Sports has boiled its Ashes coverage down to its purest and greatest form: Mike Atherton and Nasser Hussain standing there talking about what’s gone wrongDecember 18, 2025
  • The 2019 Ridiculous Ashes (podcast)December 10, 2025
  • The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments is definitely out now – you should buy it for someone! (Possibly yourself)November 6, 2025
  • 51. Michael Vaughan Declines A CrushingOctober 29, 2025

Read one of these next…

  • The 1981 Ridiculous Ashes

    The 1981 Ridiculous Ashes

  • Observations after half-watching the Hundred on TV with a couple of kids milling about the place

    Observations after half-watching the Hundred on TV with a couple of kids milling about the place

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

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

  • Which Test cricketer was the biggest burden to their side?

    Which Test cricketer was the biggest burden to their side?

  • Are we already watching peak Harry Brook?

    Are we already watching peak Harry Brook?

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What we mostly seem to write about

  • England
  • Australia
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Latest comments

  1. cjw714 on What is the most staggering aspect of Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson’s involvement in a nightclub “incident”?June 9, 2026

    And the most astonishing thing about Harry Brook potentially becoming Test captain isn't that going out the night before a…

  2. Steve Coleman on What is the most staggering aspect of Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson’s involvement in a nightclub “incident”?June 9, 2026

    It does feel a little bit like when (allegedly) Boris Johnson rambled on about making buses out of wooden crates…

  3. Dennis on What is the most staggering aspect of Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson’s involvement in a nightclub “incident”?June 9, 2026

    A cricketer who can look after himself and a rugby player who are rarely shrinking violets. Get them in the…

  4. King Cricket on What is the most staggering aspect of Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson’s involvement in a nightclub “incident”?June 9, 2026

    Imagine if it had been!

  5. Lizard on What is the most staggering aspect of Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson’s involvement in a nightclub “incident”?June 9, 2026

    Oh. Sunday night, sorry. Well. Even worse.

RSS Animals being conspicuously indifferent to cricket

  • A black standard poodle being conspicuously indifferent to a very good cricket book that you should definitely buy
  • A cat finally being won over to cricket by the sheer ridiculousness of the Ashes
  • A cat continuing to maintain almost ostentatiously conspicuous indifference to cricket

RSS Match reports

  • Match Report: Ireland vs England, 2nd T20, Malahide
  • Keep your enemies closer | a 2019 Edgbaston Ashes Test match report
  • Match report: Sixes, Fulham

RSS Cricket bats in unusual places

  • A cricket book at a castle
  • A black standard poodle being conspicuously indifferent to a very good cricket book that you should definitely buy
  • A very high quality cricket book with a lagoony backdrop

About King Cricket

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Recent Posts

  • What is the most staggering aspect of Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson’s involvement in a nightclub “incident”?
  • So how tall does Shoaib Bashir feel right now? (Presumably not 10 feet tall)
  • If Brendon McCullum does get England to play ‘smart cricket’ what does that mean for Harry Brook whose superpower is very much ‘daft cricket’?
  • A cricket book at a castle
  • Chapeau, New Zealand – not many teams come to Ireland and win a Test match

Tags

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