2 minute readThe 2023 County Championship was won in the way all great sporting competitions are won: by another team failing to secure quite enough bonus points halfway through a game taking place elsewhere. Surrey are champions again. Essex are not. Essex had needed at least 400 in their first innings against
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2 minute readSurrey are 20 points clear of Essex with a game to go. The crucial piece of information that you probably don’t quite have at your fingertips is that a maximum of 24 points can be scored in a game. We suppose there’s always an outside chance Surrey could shed a
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5 minute readAin’t no bad news like the retraction of previously issued good news. Jason Roy had already given his relieved response to being included in England’s World Cup squad when he was later excluded from it. How are you feeling since the change of heart, Jase? Not great, we’d wager. Squad
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2 minute readA few weeks ago we asked whether Ben Stokes was definitely a better pick than Harry Brook in England’s World Cup squad. We drew no firm conclusions. Smashing 182 off 124 balls to break the record for the highest score by an England batter in a one-day international (ODI) probably
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2 minute read“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” said Daniel Norcross on BBC commentary. “The throw’s come in at the non-striker’s end and there is dawdleage.” It’s hard to improve on that assessment. What was so remarkable about this dismissal is that it felt like the textbook, “yadda yadda yadda… and there’s
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2 minute readWe’re in the era of the boundary juggler. It was therefore quite refreshing to deploy an ‘oh wow’ for a good old diving catch yesterday, as Glenn Phillips briefly turned into a glider to dispatch Moeen Ali. England levelled the one-day series against New Zealand yesterday and in so doing
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2 minute readYou could definitely have AI report on Essex victories. Or maybe you couldn’t. Maybe the reports would get too samey. How would this latest one go for the win over Middlesex? ChatGPT reckons: “Essex’s opening pair, like a well-rehearsed comedy duo, set the tone for the day. Nick Browne, steady
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2 minute read“I’ve always had the ambition to play in England as an Englishman,” said Dan Worrall last year, shortly before becoming a ‘local player’ for Surrey thanks to the British passport he was entitled to through his father. It’s gone okay. He may wish he’d done it sooner. County cricket has
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3 minute readSend 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.) Thanks to Chuck for this match report and apologies for
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3 minute readLike many people, we haven’t paid much attention to the County Championship since the first batch of matches finished in May. This was not unexpected. It was, in fact, the plan – as drawn out in our 2023 “essentials” calendar. Back then, table-toppers Surrey had only played six games and
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