King Cricket

Suffering centuries: Six bowlers who conceded extraordinary Test hundreds

6 minute readThere were eight centurions in England’s gargantuan 823-7 against Pakistan in October 2024. Harry Brook (317) and Joe Root (262) attracted most of the headlines, but there was also Shaheen Shah Afridi (120), Naseem Shah (157), Abrar Ahmed (174), Aamer Jamal (126), Salman Ali Agha (118) and Saim Ayub (101).

November 17, 2024 Extras

We’ve reduced some of your crowdfunding pledges

3 minute readOne of the great things about Patreon as a crowdfunding platform is that you can adjust the sums associated with your various membership tiers. All the info on that site seems to assume you will only ever be increasing these so that you can make more money. We have decided

November 13, 2024 Extras

The next innings of social media – following-on

3 minute readUsing social media sites has always felt to us a little like building a user base for someone else’s website. We did however enjoy using Twitter in a casual, in-the-moment, thinking-out-loud kind of way and we always felt that worked well while games were actually in progress. But now it

November 11, 2024 England

Did you see… Jos Buttler’s biggest six?

3 minute read“Room for improvement” has become such a desirable attribute among England players that a “high ceiling” now feels like almost a mandatory requirement for selection. It’s instructive then to remember how England’s greatest ever white ball batter, Jos Buttler, came into the national side with almost zero headroom. If you

November 8, 2024 Match report

Sunrise without enlightenment – a Sunrisers v South East Stars match report

2 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.) Ged Ladd writes… DAISY: So who are the Sunrisers? GED:

November 5, 2024 News

Are there any women’s Test matches coming up? Yeah, sort of!

2 minute readGood news, everyone! Some Women’s Tests are probably happening! Women’s Test matches are so rare, the possibility another one might actually happen tends to be headline news. The BBC have gone with “England to play first West Indies Test since 1979” which does a pretty good job of summing things

November 1, 2024 England / India

Golden duck-off: Which was this week’s funniest? Mohammed Siraj’s or Jamie Overton’s?

3 minute readGolden ducks are always funny, but some are funnier than others. We’ve had two absolute classics in the last 24 hours and we honestly can’t choose between them. Imagine you’re a tennis player. You drive down to the club where you play. You get changed. You walk on court. Your

October 30, 2024 India / New Zealand

Which New Zealand cricketer who hasn’t really played much recently will absolutely destroy India in the third Test?

2 minute readAfter 18 home series victories in a row, India have been beaten by New Zealand. The tourists achieved this seemingly-impossible feat exactly how you’d imagine – by plopping cricketers who haven’t really been playing much into their team and asking them to immediately decimate India’s batting line-up. If you’re not

October 28, 2024 Extras

DEVICE NEWS! (A match report being conspicuously indifferent to cricket in an unusual place)

< 1 minute readSend your pictures of cricket bats and other cricket stuff in unusual places to king@kingcricket.co.uk. As Chuck will tell you, we do actually check our inbox from time to time. Chuck writes… I recently attended a non-cricket match – actually a Pixies concert – in the Simmonscourt Arena in the

October 25, 2024 India / New Zealand

Virat Kohli has been out of form for five years now – he’s basically John Crawley without the hundreds

3 minute readWe put it to you that India currently have access to batters who are better than 1990s England Test cricketer, John Crawley. That is a little uncomfortable given who such a player could replace. (Spoiler: it’s Virat Kohli.) If you haven’t seen Virat Kohli’s latest dismissal against New Zealand, let

England just need to get through the new ball and then they'll be able to dominate the Australians with the…

And, along similar lines to what Ged said, applying that attitude to playing conditions more generally would have its benefits.…

Feeling obliged to do something "for your mates" that you work with day to day, even when it's inherently unsafe…

Well, hence the 'use sparingly'. Archer's shown he still has the capacity to bowl quickly, but not necessarily 20-odd overs…

That is assuming that Archer will be bowling 90mph+, and not the 82-85mph he was bowling in his 2nd and…

From Chris ‘Napoleon’ Woakes to unbreakable Mohammed Siraj: 9 moments of pure cricket madness from the final day of a blinding and brutal Test series

Zimbabwe in England: six lessons from history for those not old enough to remember this kind of thing

In praise of the matter-of-fact dynamism of Travis Head

Mark’s wood: Talking joinery and timber with England’s fastest bowler

23 of the best, worst and weirdest cricket moments of 2024