King Cricket

June 22, 2022 England

The Overtons: England ponder samey attack

2 minute readThe Overtones are, in the words of Wikipedia, “a UK based vocal harmony group” (although it’s hard not to think the name would be a far better fit for an Undertones tribute act). The Overtons, in contrast, are a UK based quick bowling partnership. Don’t let your damned auto-correct get

June 20, 2022 Match report

Straight Outta the New Upper Compton – a match report

2 minute readSend your match reports to king@kingcricket.co.uk. We’re only really interested in the experience, so if it’s a professional match, on no account mention the cricket itself. (Conversely, if it’s an amateur match, please go into excruciating detail.) Ged Ladd writes… Charley the Gent and I had not seen live cricket

June 17, 2022 England

Bypassing the Broad and Anderson blockade

< 1 minute readRemember that mad notion that England needed to deliberately omit James Anderson and Stuart Broad to create ‘opportunities’ for new seam bowlers? England will play around half a dozen non-Anderson, non-Broad quick bowlers in the coming week alone. It was always a bit of a nonsense. When the two lithe,

June 15, 2022 England / Features / New Zealand

What Jonny Bairstow’s Kingsman church scene innings tells us about the ‘throwing off the shackles’ cliché

5 minute readViolence is great, isn’t it? Violence is so much fun. We greatly enjoyed Jonny Bairstow, at Trent Bridge, with a cricket bat. At tea on day five, England were 139-4, 160 runs from victory and Jonny Bairstow was on 43 off 48 balls, which is quick, but still within the

June 13, 2022 England

Let’s celebrate England’s erratic slip fielding

3 minute readWhen the opposition make 550, it’s rarely because of a missed catch. It’s more a result of all the other chances that weren’t even created. At the same time, an innings of 550 will tend to feature a fair few misses, if only because it’s such a huge volume of

June 8, 2022 England

Captain Stokes v Captain Root

3 minute readEverything’s amazing and fun and positive under the new England captain. Remember that previous guy? Man was he a miserable arsehole. Didn’t have a clue, did he? Whatever happened to him? Sometimes you accidentally reveal something about the past. We remember being on this cookery course in Thailand once with

June 7, 2022 England

The embiggening of Stuart Broad

2 minute readStuart Broad has always been a bowler who makes the absolute least of his height. But Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum may have a plan… Height is an attribute for a quick bowler. You don’t need data analysis to deduce this – a team photo’s enough. In most international teams

June 5, 2022 England / New Zealand

Did you see… Stuart Broad’s secondary appeal?

2 minute readAppealing is one of the great aspects of cricket and Stuart Broad is, in his own way, one of the all-time great appealers. At Lord’s, against New Zealand, he delivered a very fine secondary appeal. If you missed it, Colin de Grandhomme was run out by Ollie Pope at slip

June 2, 2022 England

Matty Potts: first look in Test cricket

2 minute readWe don’t believe you can draw meaningful conclusions from players’ debuts – but we report on them anyway. Before this match, we wondered whether Matty Potts was unusually tall or unusually quick. Turns out he’s neither, which makes Rob Key’s comment that he saw him as a “point of difference”

June 1, 2022 England / New Zealand

5 things to watch out for as Brendon McCullum’s England take on Brendon McCullum’s New Zealand

6 minute readHas any man credited with such great influence over two teams ever had less direct influence on either? Brendon McCullum undoubtedly laid foundations for the current New Zealand side. Just as Nasser Hussain added vertebrae to England between 1999 and 2003 before they delivered higher profile successes, McCullum set the