King Cricket

June 19, 2025 England

If Ollie Pope is metamorphosising into historic Lloyd Pope then which Pope is modern day Lloyd Pope becoming?

2 minute readEngland have stuck with Ollie Pope as their number three batter. However, growing numbers of people are worried that he’s metamorphosising into Australian leg-spinner, Lloyd Pope – or at least the version of Lloyd Pope from seven years ago. At the start of the summer, Ben Stokes seemed to momentarily

June 18, 2025 Match report

Tennises, Black Caps and tie envy at the World Test Championship Final | a match report

3 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.) Inveterate King Cricket match reporter, Ged Ladd, writes… I spent

June 16, 2025 Australia / South Africa

Where the 2025 World Test Championship was won (and lost) and what’s next for Australia and South Africa

3 minute readIt feels like South Africa threw the World Test Championship Final away more times than Australia. It’s just that when Australia threw it away, they did so decisively. To recap all the throws, South Africa, in their position as underdogs, very definitely threw the match away in their first innings

June 12, 2025 Australia / South Africa

Crucial Session Watch | World Test Championship Final, day two

2 minute readOoh, it’s a crucial session coming up, isn’t it? It promises to be a great, great morning for fans of commentators saying, ‘it’s a crucial session coming up’. Before the World Test Championship Final began, a lot of the selection intrigue centred on who exactly should get to stand at

June 10, 2025 Australia / South Africa

Temba Bavuma’s South Africa Test team could go out on a high here, same as England’s 2019 50-over side did

< 1 minute readHere’s an interesting little factoid: South Africa don’t have any Test matches scheduled for their next home summer. South Africa’s strapping boys face Australia in the World Test Championship Final this week. We all know how they got there, because every preview has featured varying amounts of dappled shade. The

June 9, 2025 Match report

Blue for Bob Day 2024, England v West Indies at Edgbaston – a match report

3 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.) Daisy writes… An honorary Heavy Roller, I sometimes join the

June 6, 2025 England / India

Virat Kohli explains why the England v India Tests are already jostling the West Indies T20s aside (with help from Marlon Samuels)

4 minute readEngland’s three-match T20 series against the West Indies starts tonight, which means that 90% of recent news has been about the Test series that follows. England named their Test squad, you see – because they didn’t feel doing that would confuse people at all. It’s noteworthy that, in this country

June 4, 2025 England

Welcome to the world of tomorrow! | a recap of England’s 3-0 ODI series win over the West Indies

2 minute readThe Harry Brook era is underway! And we have deigned to write a few sentences about it! New world, old men When Eoin Morgan overhauled England’s ODI team after the 2015 World Cup, the top two performers in the next (completed) game were Joe Root and Jos Buttler, neither of

May 30, 2025 England

A ruddy great hole in the team didn’t stop England hitting 400 and beating the West Indies by a mile

2 minute readThe last time England hit 400, almost 50 ODIs ago, they near as damn it made it to 500. It’s been a while. Probably shouldn’t complain. On that occasion, Eoin Morgan made a golden duck and a couple of weeks later he stopped playing cricket. England’s first 400 had come

May 28, 2025 County cricket / England / West Indies

What these ostensibly pointless West Indies ODIs are actually for, plus the latest update on Lancashire’s recovery masterplan

2 minute readThey say that in London you’re never more than six feet from a rat that has ballooned in size after feeding on one of the city’s countless sewer fatbergs. We don’t know about that, but we do know that in cricket you’re never more than 12 months from a T20

Maybe his central contract lens will fall out...

Tbf Stuart Broad made an interesting point about the turf at Old Trafford not allowing the bowlers to build up…

as McGrath said..."five nil to the Aussies". ..

England lost the last test against India by 6 runs, Tongue in India’s first innings gave away 16 wides in…

England just need to get through the new ball and then they'll be able to dominate the Australians with the…

From Chris ‘Napoleon’ Woakes to unbreakable Mohammed Siraj: 9 moments of pure cricket madness from the final day of a blinding and brutal Test series

Zimbabwe in England: six lessons from history for those not old enough to remember this kind of thing

In praise of the matter-of-fact dynamism of Travis Head

Mark’s wood: Talking joinery and timber with England’s fastest bowler

23 of the best, worst and weirdest cricket moments of 2024