King Cricket

October 22, 2023 England

The Tupperware freshness of Jos Buttler’s England World Cup team

4 minute readEngland’s 2019 World Cup team was just about good enough to win. The hypothesis for 2023 seems to have been, “Maybe if we don’t expose the team to any air or light, it’ll keep.” If you’re almost exactly our age, you may remember the children’s TV series Eerie Indiana and

October 19, 2023 England / South Africa

Buttler, Bavuma and the big pain of big losses to big teams – with or without Ben

3 minute readSometimes it feels like every time you switch on Sky Sports, India are playing a game at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. We’ve no idea where this feeling comes from because since 2017 the ground’s only hosted one Test match and two one-day internationals. There’s a big match on the

October 18, 2023 Netherlands

Let’s take a look at the many powerful emotions conveyed during a Roelof van der Merwe wicket celebration

4 minute read2023 World Cup, Game 15, Netherlands v South Africa Roelof van der Merwe very visibly experiences feelings whenever he takes a wicket for the Netherlands. When he took a couple against his former team, South Africa, en route to a famous victory, he arguably experienced a few more than normal.

October 15, 2023 Afghanistan / England

Rahmanullah Gurbaz has a point to make and a point boundary to pepper

2 minute read2023 World Cup, Game 13, Afghanistan v England England are still 2-1 up on Afghanistan in 50-over World Cup matches. Expand the head to head to include all one-day internationals and England are… 2-1 up. You wonder what sort of damage Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Mujeeb Ur Rahman would have done

October 12, 2023 Australia

Innings of the day: Marnus Labuschagne nrrdling 46 off 74 balls

< 1 minute read2023 World Cup, Game 10, Australia v South Africa A familiar, weird and, in its own peculiar way, quite wonderful feature of World Cup group stage games is when a fundamentally beaten team sets itself the unambitious goal of making things slightly less awful. So it was that Marnus Labuschagne’s

October 11, 2023 Sri Lanka

No, Kusal Mendis, you will not fool us into watching you (except maybe in highlights packages)

2 minute read2023 World Cup, Game 8, Pakistan v Sri Lanka Early evidence in our quest to find a Sri Lanka player worth watching suggests that Kusal Mendis is a contender. No way, son. We’ve been fooled before. In that World Cup players to watch piece we did, we said that our

October 10, 2023 England

Is Dawid Malan the new Jonny Bairstow? Always on the hunt for doubters to prove wrong

2 minute readWhen will Dawid Malan (six hundreds in 23 innings, average of 63.15, strike-rate of 98.44) finally prove himself? “I’m desperate to do well in this format and prove a point that I deserve to be in there,” said Malan today, after his latest ton. Two games ago, Malan hit another

October 9, 2023 England

Jos Buttler is lost in Dharamsala’s sandy outfield

2 minute readNot to get all Meatloaf about this, but England would do anything to save a run. But they won’t do that. No, they won’t do that. If you haven’t already seen, England are due to play in Dharamasala tomorrow. It’s possibly the most beautiful ground in the world if you

October 6, 2023 England / New Zealand

By the largest of margins – but Devon Conway and Rachin Ravindra should be pacing themselves like, ooh, let’s say Dawid Malan

2 minute read2023 Cricket World Cup, Game 1, England v New Zealand There’s not much sign that New Zealand have many batters in form, while two of the three we’ve seen are clearly peaking too soon. England, in contrast, are pacing their ascent to top form beautifully. Starting here at ‘dogshit’, they

October 4, 2023 Extras

The Worth Watching Ratings: One player from each nation (except Sri Lanka) to keep an eye on during the 2023 Cricket World Cup

6 minute readOnce upon a time, cricket was a bigger part of our job. A World Cup or two ago, we used to watch a fair bit of one-day cricket and consequently had a pretty decent handle on how each team went about its business. These days? Not so much. This may