3 minute read Some pretty big news has broken since England (finally) touched down in India for their five-Test series. It’s not Virat Kohli missing the first two games for personal reasons. It’s not Harry Brook missing (probably, maybe) the whole series, also for personal reasons. It’s to do with Ben Stokes. We
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Hyderabad Test pitch preview with Mulder
4 minute read A Test tour of India feels like a bit of a free hit these days. England are supposed to lose… heavily. Captain and coach talk a good game and their ambitions and belief are genuine, but if the tourists emerge with anything less than a 5-0 defeat, those oh-so-familiar clichéd
Continue readingLord Megachief of Gold 2023
5 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. We don’t want to start all downbeat, but sometimes an exercise brings a particular situation into sharper focus. We all know
Continue readingThe 2023 Festivus holding page: The Boxing Day Tests
< 1 minute read If you don’t know our approach to covering the Boxing Day Tests, it involves listing what matches are taking place, wishing everyone a happy Festivus and then buggering off. In previous years, you, the readership, have boldly stepped into the breach and highlighted all the interesting cricket in the comments
Continue readingThree or four wishy-washy conclusions from Day 1 of a rare India v England Test
3 minute read To scroll through the list of venues for women’s Tests between England and India is to be struck by two things. (1) They don’t play in India very often. (2) The few India Tests that do take place are held in rather bigger cities than the ones used for the
Continue readingNo offence to Tilak Varma or Nathan Ellis but these India v Australia T20s are probably even less of a big deal than the last “irrelevant” post World Cup series
3 minute read Where were you when Ruturaj Gaikwad was run out by Nathan Ellis? You almost certainly have no idea because you almost certainly weren’t paying attention and quite possibly don’t even realise that it happened in an India v Australia match. International cricket teams aren’t guitars: in an ideal world you’d
Continue readingWhen Glenn Maxwell went largely unseen and the Narendra Modi Stadium went anticlimactically unheard – the surprisingly good World Cup final that no-one asked for
4 minute read If you’d asked anyone, at any point in the last year, how this ever-so-predictable World Cup would climax, they’d have all given exactly the same answer. It was always going to end with Welcome to the Jungle blaring out over the PA as Marnus Labuschagne punched the air with 58
Continue readingDid you see… Mohammed Shami refusing to cede a wicket to Jasprit Bumrah?
< 1 minute read Today Mohammed Shami’s insatiable thirst for World Cup wickets spilled over into his fielding when he utterly failed to secure an easy wicket from a delivery bowled by someone else. What happened was: Jasprit Bumrah bowled, Kane Williamson hit it straight to Shami, and Shami for some reason went all
Continue readingHave Rohit Sharma and Rahul Dravid got things running too smoothly? India haven’t had to win a game yet
3 minute read On Wednesday – near enough six weeks after the World Cup began – India play their first game that they actually have to win. The form guide suggests New Zealand will be swept away, but the form guide hasn’t been measuring must-win games. The truism here is that Indian players
Continue readingAffinity, attendance and attire at India’s greatest food ground – what it was like to watch Australia v Pakistan in Bangalore (shame about the DJ)
7 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.) Ritesh writes… The moment the World Cup schedule was (finally)
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