King Cricket

February 21, 2025 England

So this is Buttler and McCullum’s England first team – more wicketkeepers than bowling options

3 minute readIn these multi-format days of infernal rotation, you don’t often get a good, clear look at a country’s various first teams. But with just three group stage games in the Champions Trophy and an incentive to win at least a couple of them, England have given us a sighter of

February 19, 2025 New Zealand / Pakistan

Pakistan park pointlessly to pass passive powerplay

< 1 minute readPakistan have looked back on the 1999 World Cup, when hosts England were famously knocked out before the official tournament song was released, and thought to themselves, “Surely we can improve on that.” Two balls into the first match of the Champions Trophy, Fakhar Zaman was injured. His subsequent time

February 18, 2025 Match report

England v New Zealand at the Oval in 1999 – 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.) Daisy writes… I had never been to a professional cricket

February 13, 2025 England

Seven questions that tell us the (somewhat dodgy) state of England’s one-day cricket right now

5 minute readJos Buttler fell back on words like ‘learning’ and ‘unit’ in his latest post-match interview, which is never a good sign. These sorts of clichés are the sign of a man who knows a few things are wrong but doesn’t really want to talk about them right now, thank you

February 11, 2025 England / India

Are we crazy or is McCullum shaping an old-fashioned and outright bad England ODI bowling attack?

3 minute readEither Brendon McCullum’s ahead of the curve on this one, or he’s found a brand new road to a very familiar destination. England have moved quite some way from one of Eoin Morgan’s central principles when it comes to putting together a one-day international (ODI) bowling attack. “Pace just adds

February 6, 2025 England / India

Champions Trophy: D’ya eye these ODIs or did ya already OD on those ODIs?

3 minute read“I’ve always enjoyed 50-over cricket,” said Jos Buttler this week. “It’s always been one of my favourite formats.” Really, Jos? You don’t say. One of your favourites? Would it make your top three? Speaking of third-bests, the Champions Trophy looms, well, not large exactly, given its status as very much

February 4, 2025 County cricket

The Hundred sales: What do these billionaires honestly hope to get out of their investment?

7 minute readHundreds of millions of pounds are being spent on 49% stakes in tinpot teams that play a niche format of cricket watched by hardly anyone in the host country. Everyone seems to have an opinion on this, but if there’s one group of people we’d like to hear from, it’s

January 31, 2025 Australia / England

Not enough weekend beach sport? Jon Lewis needs to have a proper think about why England grassed seven chances in one day

3 minute readDid England drop seven chances today because the British idea of beach sport is going down the arcades and spending half an hour on one of those penny pusher games? Probably not, but there must be some reason why they’ve arrived at the wheelless phase of an Ashes tour. Lack

January 30, 2025 Australia / Features

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

7 minute readIs there a less showy attacking batter than Australia’s Travis Head? Australia picked a new opener not so long ago – a couple of them actually. The second one was Sam Konstas, who quickly concluded that the best way to counter the world’s best fast bowler was by repeatedly attempting

January 27, 2025 Pakistan / West Indies

Where does Jomel Warrican’s pioneering work as a number 11 all-rounder leave Pakistan’s Test cricket?

3 minute readYou’ve seen a rum old Test match when the team that was 38-7 before drinks on the first morning ends up winning easily. That’s what Jomel Warrican helped the West Indies achieve against Pakistan this week though. To recap Warrican’s match, he walked in to bat at 95-9 and promptly