King Cricket

November 26, 2024 England / New Zealand

Jacob Bethell and Ollie Pope star in England Test Selection VI: Assignment Hagley Oval

3 minute readRemember a couple of years ago when Ollie Pope was picked to bat at number three for England even though he’d never batted higher than four in first-class cricket? Well it’s gone so well he’s earned a promotion to number six and also won back the wicketkeeping gloves. This has

November 25, 2024 Australia / India

Jasprit Bumrah v Australia’s top four

3 minute readWould it be fair to say that Jasprit Bumrah had the better of Australia’s top order in Perth? Not really. Not unless you also feel the Death Star had the better of Alderaan. So is there any cause for optimism for these batters beyond the timeless fallback, “well surely it

November 22, 2024 Australia / India

Did you see… Labuschagne MAKE KOHLI PAY

2 minute readAfter yet again failing with the bat, Virat Kohli dropped Marnus Labuschagne second ball. Oh how Australia’s number three made him pay. Kohli’s aspiration to bat like John Crawley grows ever larger. Today he made five (two singles and a three, for what it’s worth) before playing a tentative, back

November 21, 2024 Australia / England / India / New Zealand

King Cricket Test tour SPECIAL OFFERS

3 minute readObviously we’ll be covering England’s Test tour of New Zealand and India’s of Australia whether you buy us a pint or not… but hey, we wouldn’t say no… Sorry about all the Patreon-related posting of late. We’ll get back to the actual cricket after this one, we promise. We just

November 20, 2024 Match report

Some bloke catching another bloke in a 2001 charity match (a 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’s official cricket biographer, Herbert Ackgrass, writes… The match

November 18, 2024 Australia / Features / India / Pakistan / Zimbabwe

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