Features | King Cricket

October 28, 2020 Australia / Features

Which Australia player was least happy about rewatching their Headingley 2019 nightmare?

The day after Ben Stokes and Jack Leach at Headingley in 2019, Australia coach Justin Langer forced his players to watch the footage. Thanks to Amazon’s documentary, The Test, we can see how that went down. It did not go down very well. Who was least happy about it? Cricket

Our very favourite thing about Netflix’s Cricket Fever: Lasith Malinga lurking in the background of every scene like a highly conspicuous ghost

We’ve finished watching Cricket Fever, Netflix’s documentary series about Mumbai Indians’ 2018 IPL campaign. It’s good, and personal experience revealed that even people who don’t especially like cricket may well enjoy it. It’s not a huge and revelatory experience or anything, but we’d say that people who don’t normally enjoy

September 30, 2020 England / Features

Which England all-rounder has the worst record as captain – Botham, Flintoff or Stokes?

Tony Greig captained England 14 times and managed three wins – all of them in India in a series victory. But we’ve already said too much, because there is only one rule when you talk about England all-rounders, and that is that you must always neglect to mention Tony Greig.

September 17, 2020 Features / India

Let’s use Ken Nordine’s word jazz album ‘Colors’ to work out who’s going to win the 2020 IPL

If there’s a simple and obvious way of predicting the 2020 IPL that for some reason hasn’t yet been done, it’s this… We’re going to look at all of the team kits; we’re going to establish the main colour of each one; and then we’re going to listen to what

August 30, 2020 England / Features

When Mike Atherton was run-out for 99 – was this the worst ‘no’ in the history of cricket?

The most powerful ‘no’ in film is the one in Rise of the Planet of the Apes when Caesar reveals that he is far more than a “damn dirty ape”. It happens a surprisingly long way into the film, which allows for quite a lot of emotional build-up. It’s well-timed

August 25, 2020 England / Features / Pakistan

Behold the rich tapestry of emotions when Stuart Broad dropped yet another catch off Jimmy Anderson but then ran the batsman out

If England’s 2020 Test summer is remembered for anything, it will not be for the return of BBC highlights, Ben Stokes doing absolutely everything against the West Indies or the bizarre sights and sounds of matches played without crowds. No, if England’s 2020 Test summer is remembered for anything it

August 7, 2020 England / Features / Pakistan

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

It’s probably Shoaib Akhtar’s fault. It started with Wasim Akram, obviously. He was the one who first presented us with this idea that the current score might not necessarily be the real score. The scorecard in an early Nineties Lancashire match required a coda. ‘This many runs for this many

July 22, 2020 England / Features

Let’s rate the ‘serious face’ of every England player in the trailer for The Edge

Here’s a trailer for The Edge, that documentary about the England team that got to number one in the world and then fell apart. We had ten questions about an earlier trailer, but this second one really ramped up the seriousness. NO ENGLAND TEAM FELL HARDER says one of the

July 20, 2020 Extras / Features

Which Test nation’s top five wicket takers would form the most balanced attack?

Thanks to all our Patreon patrons for funding this site. There’s no way this kind of feature would appear in a proper publication. Your crowdfunding makes this pointless cobblers possible. If you enjoy the site and feel it’s worth a quid (or the cost of a pint) each month, you

July 8, 2020 Australia / England / Features

The cult of digging in: The almost impossible psychological trick the batsman must pull off when you want him to play a rearguard

Do you know the only way you can successfully ‘dig in’ as a batsman? Completely and utterly mindlessly. Any other approach is far too much mental hard work and means you’ll make a bad decision sooner rather than later. We wrote a long thing for the Nightwatchman, Wisden’s quarterly publication,