King Cricket

August 21, 2024 England / Sri Lanka

They’re ripping you off by having Sri Lanka warm up for Test cricket with a Test match

3 minute readBeing as it comprises three whole Tests, it’s probably inaccurate to describe this England v Sri Lanka series as ‘short’. After all, this is an era when two Tests inside a fortnight supposedly qualifies as a ‘series’. But while there’s technically a first, second and third Test between these two

August 19, 2024 England

England look to the futuristic year of 2013 and the flashing blade of Chris Woakes

3 minute readIf your sporting memory stretches this far back, you may remember that James Anderson opted to retire from Test cricket shortly after he was invited to retire from Test cricket by Brendon McCullum, Ben Stokes and Rob Key. Their reasoning was that it was time to look towards “the future”.

August 16, 2024 South Africa

How are Tristan Stubbs and South Africa’s other ‘strapping boys’ getting on against the West Indies then?

3 minute readThis may have passed you by, but South Africa Test coach Shukri Conrad gave a slightly odd explanation for why Tristan Stubbs has become their new number three. It was one of those moments where you wonder whether you’re getting a weird insight into another culture’s values. Speaking to Cricinfo,

August 15, 2024 Regulars

Conspicuous indifference to Dan Lawrence’s gyrations from a human being

2 minute readIf you’ve got a picture of an animal being conspicuously indifferent to cricket, please send it to king@kingcricket.co.uk. Ged Ladd writes… Daisy and I celebrated her release without charge from The Old Bailey (at the end of two weeks’ jury service, I hasten to add) by attending the Nell Mescal

August 13, 2024 England

There is one bit of terrifically good news if Ben Stokes can’t play the first Test against Sri Lanka

3 minute readAt the time of writing, it looks like Ben Stokes’ left leg needs to be re-hamstrung after a twanging incident while running a single for Northern Superchargers earlier in the week. (Would the same thing have happened had he been playing for Northern Gentle Amblers? We can never know.) This

August 8, 2024 England / Features

Five Graham Thorpe innings that were equal parts silly, brilliant and vital

8 minute readWe don’t know whether Graham Thorpe was underappreciated exactly, because it seems like every England supporter who watched him play in fact valued him immensely. We do feel that Thorpe has been under-written-about though… so we’ve written about him. If you want a sense of what Thorpe meant to England

August 7, 2024 Regulars

Is Winter (the cat) truly indifferent to cricket?

< 1 minute readIf you’ve got a picture of an animal being conspicuously indifferent to cricket, please send it to king@kingcricket.co.uk. Balladeer writes… These are Mysie the calico and Winter the black cat. They joined the Balladeer household in June. They’re rather cute when they’re not kicking each other’s heads in or digging

August 5, 2024 England

Graham Thorpe was the one batter who transcended England’s 1990s (and also helped belatedly end them)

4 minute readA lot of England fans wouldn’t have stayed with Test cricket through the 90s if it hadn’t been for Graham Thorpe. He was a class above at a time when the team – and more importantly the supporters – needed it most. It is profoundly hollowing to hear that he

July 31, 2024 England

Why Jos Buttler should be England’s next white ball coach

4 minute readOur suspicion is that England’s white ball teams will get where they need to go sooner if Jos Buttler takes on the role of coach as well as captain. Bear with us on this. England have had both a bad World Cup and a meh World Cup inside the last

July 29, 2024 England / West Indies

Did you see… Mark Wood bowling reverse swing?

3 minute readWhen it comes to seam bowling, speed is not everything – but it is something. Reverse swing is something too. Mark Wood delivered the best combination of somethings against the West Indies yesterday. Fast reverse swing is just such a fundamentally wonderful thing. It’s so straightforward, so obvious. Its crushing