King Cricket

September 19, 2018 India / Pakistan

Kedar Jadhav once dobbed three wickets against Pakistan

< 1 minute readOne of the great things about cricket is that a match can be unimaginably massive and yet one of the key contributions will come from someone who doesn’t even practise. Kedar Jadhav doesn’t really bowl in the nets. He’s probably worried that any attempt to hone his craft will wash

September 18, 2018 County cricket

Why is cricket so infatuated with the Powerplay?

2 minute readOne of the more mundane revelations from the recently undertaken trials of The Hundred is that they’re going to have a Powerplay. ‘So what?’ you might think. But when all innovations seem to be on the table and the aim is to make the game as simple and straightforward as

September 13, 2018 County cricket

Morkel Burns Pope (and now for some commas)

2 minute readSurrey have won the County Championship. You win 10 of 12 matches and draw the other two and these things happen. We were checking the averages in the first division of the County Championship earlier today and two things struck us. Firstly, very few people have averaged over 40 and

September 13, 2018 County cricket

You can probably gauge the worth of Paul Collingwood from that time he was an umpire

2 minute readPaul Collingwood excelled at all those aspects of cricket which are undervalued; all the ones that are hard to measure; stuff like fielding and unearthing singles that have no right to be taken. Because of this, he was one of our heroes when he retired from international cricket and he’s

September 11, 2018 England / India

It might not be entirely fair to judge Adil Rashid on his ability to unfailingly produce magic on demand

2 minute readEngland got to have a go at partnership-breaking when the ball wasn’t doing a right lot today. Everyone had a go and everyone failed and then Joe Root finally gave Adil Rashid a bowl and he got both lads out. That’s a very simplistic way to describe how things went,

September 10, 2018 England

Let’s strap on Alastair Cook’s pads for a minute so that we can appreciate his streamlined thinking

2 minute readAfter precisely one Test match, we’d seen all the shots (and non-shots) we were ever going to see from Alastair Cook. You know them all, but let’s list them anyway. Maybe in 20 years time you’ll revisit this article having forgotten one of them. The leave The forward defensive The

September 9, 2018 India

Ravindra Jadeja is pretty annoying which almost certainly means he’s good at cricket

2 minute readThere are two main reasons why cricketers are annoying. (1) They play for your team and they aren’t very good. (2) They play for the opposition and they are very good. The first is self-evident. The second is rather more nuanced and deserves a little bit of elaboration. So let’s

September 5, 2018 Match report

A near-streak match report from Lord’s from when England played India

2 minute readEdwardian writes: I had stayed in London the night before, so got to Lord’s early. I was frisked by a security chap who was pouring with sweat. “Blimey, mate,” I said. “You’ve been on it.” He replied: “It’s the menopause” – a line I suspect he was using liberally. After

September 4, 2018 Uncategorized

England have been freed from Alastair Cook’s mindless batting but sadly also from Alastair Cook

2 minute readAlastair Cook has looked jaded. The modern way is to throw things away when they’re past their best. They left it too late, but we’d have had a go at recycling. A routine can be a great way to continue doing things well. Once things start to deteriorate, it can

September 3, 2018 England / India

Could India actually be better tourists?

< 1 minute readDepends on your perspective really. They’re a competitive and exciting side who could quite easily be 3-1 up. Their batsmen are better than England’s, their four main bowlers have been brilliant – but they’ve lost the series. From our perspective this is pretty much tourist perfection. We absolutely do not

Did I do any of that?! Nevertheless, I'm happy to grab some reflected glory from the outstanding work of others…

Massively belated, but: I recognise that username! Appreciate your work on the Grauniad county cricket dictionary. Very useful.

"Zimbabwe have edged Australia..." Obvious crude jokes aside, AFF's piece in Cricinfo tells us that Zimbabwe "were so clearly, and…

I do hope you-know-who doesn't find out about the Netherlands. He might think he now owns it/them, although I very…

I feel like the poster child for the "if something goes wrong, never attempt anything like it ever again" approach…

Did you see… Harry Brook’s first ball in Melbourne? Unquestionably the 2025/26 Ashes’ finest moment

Sky Sports has boiled its Ashes coverage down to its purest and greatest form: Mike Atherton and Nasser Hussain standing there talking about what’s gone wrong

The 2019 Ridiculous Ashes (podcast)

The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments is definitely out now – you should buy it for someone! (Possibly yourself)

51. Michael Vaughan Declines A Crushing