King Cricket

What ‘looking ahead to the Ashes’ tells us about Test cricket’s future (and T20 and the IPL)

4 minute readRajasthan Royals owner Manoj Badale has told the BBC that, “We are going to have to think creatively about Test cricket if we want it to work.” This was shortly after he’d said the quiet bit out loud. It’s easy to characterise IPL franchise owners as ravenous financial speculators with

May 3, 2023 Match report

Potential converts and marshmallows – a Middlesex v Kent 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.) Balladeer writes… I haven’t actually been to the cricket that

May 2, 2023 County cricket

Surrey’s sly tricks take them top of the table

2 minute readSurrey have learned from Hampshire. If you want to advance your cause in the County Championship, play a match. It seems so simple, but you’d be surprised how many teams fail to take this obvious first step. Surrey and Warwickshire were early front-runners in the Championship, but got complacent, kicked

April 27, 2023 Features

Grim final Tests: 8 players who went out on a massive low

6 minute readEvery player wants to go out on a high, but few actually do. Most topple forwards and face-plant when attempting to bow out in style. And that’s what life’s about. You do your best for a bit and then the ending’s probably going to be a little bit of a

April 25, 2023 Ireland / Sri Lanka

Paul Stirling and Curtis Campher hundreds show that actually things weren’t ‘only going to get tougher’ for Ireland in Test cricket

2 minute read“It is tough and it’s only going to get tougher,” said Ireland captain Andrew Balbirnie after Sri Lanka won the first Test by an innings and 280 runs. That seemed a wildly inaccurate assessment at the time – and indeed so it has proven. Ireland conceded 591-6 in the first

April 24, 2023 County cricket

Hampshire’s sly tricks take them top of the table

2 minute readYou’ve got to keep your eye on Hampshire – they’re devious fiends. If you were to attempt to prosecute Hampshire for the crime of sly deviousness, Exhibit A in your case would be their continued use of a relentlessly accurate seam bowling attack, none of whom are likely to get

April 19, 2023 Australia

David Warner is secretly rubbish at cricket

3 minute readIt really doesn’t seem any great surprise that David Warner should be in Australia’s Ashes squad. But actually, for a man who has 103 Test caps and 25 hundreds to his name, his case is oddly weak. Here in the UK, it’s about the time of year when people start

April 17, 2023 County cricket

Sam Hain, Ollie Pope and the making of County Championship hundreds

2 minute readSurrey’s Ollie Pope has made 264 runs in four County Championships innings this year. Warwickshire’s Sam Hain has made 284 in two. It’s a reminder of how England’s selectors can sometimes influence the title race. Essex, Hampshire and (technically) Kent made the early running in the opening round of the

April 15, 2023 Regulars

A cricketing effigy in an unexpected place

< 1 minute readSend your pictures of cricket bats and other cricket stuff in unusual places to king@kingcricket.co.uk. It is more than okay to put the cricket thing in the unusual place yourself if you want. Regular King Cricket contributor Ged Ladd writes… Deep within Standard Chartered Bank’s City of London offices, while

April 12, 2023 County cricket

James Anderson, Jamie Porter and Sam Cook plus a whole bunch of lethal overseas dobblers… Essex v Lancashire doesn’t promise to be a runfest

3 minute readAt one point during last year’s visit to Chelmsford to play Essex, Lancashire were 7-6. All in all, across both innings, they managed just 204 runs. They won the match. James Anderson’s back for this year’s trip… Cricket being cricket, we fully expect this week’s Essex v Lancashire clash to