King Cricket

May 8, 2025 India

Rohit Sharma: all over the place as a Test batter, less annoying than Virat Kohli as a Test captain

3 minute readThey called him Nohit, they called him Hitman – honestly, just make your bloody minds up. When a specialist batter’s feted for the central act of hitting the ball, but also infamous for completely failing to do so, you know he’s covered a bit of ground over the course of

May 7, 2025 County cricket

Two remarkable things about Ethan Bamber as Warwickshire move up to second

2 minute readIf there’s one thing you can confidently say about Warwickshire’s Ethan Bamber, it’s that his father played Hitler in a Tom Cruise film. The film in question was Valkyrie, about a failed attempt by German army officers to assassinate Hitler. As is for some reason traditional when Hollywood needs people

May 2, 2025 England

Cook with gas: England’s parallel quick and not-quite-so quick bowling queues

4 minute readIt looks like Essex’s Sam Cook is finally going to get a Test cap. “About time!” you might be thinking. Or maybe you’re thinking, “Okay, that makes sense now – although which other bowlers is he going to be playing alongside?” With 318 first-class wickets at 19.77, Sam Cook’s statistical

April 29, 2025 County cricket

Fergie time is over – Rocky times still await

2 minute read“When you go, your footprints will fill with grass. Moss shall cover your tombstone, and as the sun rises, green shall spread over all, in all its shades and hues. This verdigris will overtake your swords and your coins and your battlements and, try as you might, all you hold

April 24, 2025 County cricket

Drawsome: County Championship battle for mid-table mediocrity rages

1 minute readThere’s another top of the table clash looming in the County Championship this week. That’s not as dramatic as it sounds though because as tables go it’s something of a chabudai. Quite a lot of teams have only managed one win so far this season – and they’re the high

April 23, 2025 County cricket / Uncategorized

What in Blazes? English women’s domestic game restarts in (yet) another user-friendly format

2 minute readIn England the men’s domestic game tends to flail around incorrigibly, endlessly adding formats and complexity to make itself ever more impenetrable. The women’s game, in contrast, tends to move from one reasoned, accessible structure to another. The sheer frequency of overhauls seems to us the only meaningful attempt to

April 17, 2025 County cricket / Extras

Easter weekenders, Quote of the Week + Olympic Fairground attraction | Mop-up of the day

3 minute readLots of shreds of cricket news about today. Let’s weave them into a single thing – say, half an underpant. Weekender In the UK, weekends don’t come much bigger than Easter for the simple reason that it’s twice as long. It’s therefore a big one in county cricket too because

April 15, 2025 County cricket

Are the 2025 County Championship pacemakers going to drop out after a few laps?

2 minute readTwo games in, the first division of the County Championship has taken on a blobby, amorphous shape with three counties on the same number of points at the top. Will any of them still be in the running at the competition’s autumnal climax? We may as well start with the

April 10, 2025 England

Succession: Who becomes England Test captain when Ben Stokes inevitably suffers his next major injury?

3 minute read“Yes, if it is to be said, so it be, so it is,” as Greg Hirsch would say. Harry Brook has been named England’s T20 and one-day international captain, as we all assumed he would be. So what happens when Ben Stokes gets injured and can’t lead the Test team

April 9, 2025 County cricket / England

What’s more? Tom Banton ups the volume

5 minute readThere’s a fundamental tension these days between specialising in one particular format and striving to become a more rounded cricketer. It’s pretty much impossible to walk both paths, but right now Tom Banton appears to have put a good few footprints on each. In the parallel worlds of strength and