King Cricket

August 7, 2018 England

Is Ollie Pope poised to go papal on India? Does anyone know what that would involve?

2 minute readWe found ourself talking about Ollie Pope quite a bit early this season, way back when they played County Championship cricket semi-regularly. The ability to counter green pitch dobblery in April may not be wholly relevant to the challenge of facing India at the back end of an arid British

August 6, 2018 Match report

England v Australia ODI at Cardiff – an overview of food, beer and men in odd shirts

2 minute readTom writes: Having not been to Sophia Gardens before, I was a little unsure what to expect. However, having been to international matches before, I knew that I would be at least £60 less well off before I started. Nevertheless, we got in, only to find out they can’t serve

August 4, 2018 England / India

Was that really a good Test match?

3 minute readThere’s this odd belief in cricket that people want to see fours and sixes. They don’t. They want to see jeopardy. What is jeopardy? It’s when wickets matter. It’s when everything you see has an impact on the outcome of the game. When one team makes 400 and the other

August 2, 2018 England / India

Virat Kohli’s elite levels of obliviousness and delusion

3 minute readThere were three phases to Virat Kohli’s hundred. There was the bit where he kept being beaten by the bowlers; there was the bit where the ball wasn’t doing quite so much but he was still shaken up; and there was the bit where everything went back to normal and

August 2, 2018 England / India

Virat Kohli ran out Joe Root and then he did a good thing and then he did a bad thing

2 minute readWe don’t know if the following is fair or not. You could probably prove it one way or the other using ‘statistics’ or ‘facts’. It certainly feels true though and if modern politics tells us anything, it’s that what feels true is of far greater significance that what actually is

August 1, 2018 England

To celebrate England’s 1,000th men’s Test match, we ask: which one was the most mediocre?

2 minute readIt’s England’s 1,000th Test match. In honour of this inevitable round number, we thought it would be nice to pick out the most mediocre Test they’ve played. Not poor. Mediocre. Just middling and neither here nor there really. Method We went through all of England’s 999 men’s Test matches and

July 31, 2018 England / India

Which is more likely: a Virat Kohli hundred, an Adil Rashid five-for or a Kuldeep Yadav five-for?

2 minute readMany things will happen when England play India from tomorrow. It’s tempting to imagine that the first Test match is some sort of newspaper headline final which will only feature those who were prominent during the quarters and semis in recent weeks. Viewed from that perspective, which is more likely:

July 30, 2018 Extras

The Lord’s Throdkin dispute

2 minute readYou may or may not remember the Lord’s Throdkin. If you do, you will be very excited to hear that there has been a development… Ged writes: Lancastrian nephew-in-law Escamillo Escapillo is partial to my Lord’s Throdkin cookies. I was to spend the first of three days at Lord’s watching

July 26, 2018 England

Adil Rashid’s back!

2 minute readAs in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. Is Adil Rashid a bowler who can take wickets when others cannot? Yeah, probably. Sometimes. Does Adil Rashid’s selection for the Test squad having previously jacked in red ball cricket maybe raise a couple of awkward questions? Erm, yeah, probably.

July 26, 2018 England

The three main changes you can always make to the England Test team

2 minute readWhen a Test squad’s due to be announced, everyone normally has a default XI in mind and then we all make swaps according to our own prejudices. Typically, everyone wants to make between one and three changes. Change No 1 is when you replace the rubbish batsman you hate with