King Cricket

Separate teams? What might a world of cricket format specialists actually look like?

9 minute readWay, way back in 2006, in our first year of writing this website, we described the international fixture list as being fatter than a TV-loving, chip-munching hippo with an abnormally slow metabolism. We probably should have left ourself with more room for manoeuvre because where does that leave us now?

April 4, 2022 Australia / England

Lesson from the World Cup final: the team that wins absolutely every single game is a good team

2 minute readWell that wasn’t precisely how we expected England to lose the World Cup final to Australia. Nat Sciver played one of the finest World Cup final innings you’re ever likely to see in England’s forlorn chase of 357, making 148 not out off 121 balls. The only issue was that

April 1, 2022 Extras

The Hundred v Test cricket reading experiment

2 minute readHere at King Cricket, we have a strong history of EXPERIMENTS. Here, a mere 15 years after the last one, is another EXPERIMENT. Regular King Cricket correspondent Ged writes… Abstract The null hypothesis was that reading at the Hundred would be hampered by distractions whereas reading at the Test Match

March 30, 2022 Australia / England / South Africa

Who will lose to Australia in the World Cup final?

2 minute readWhen we put together our Essentials Calendar last month, we figured we’d turn our attention to the World Cup at this point. We thought our gaze would shift from the West Indies v England Test series at the perfect time and we’d catch a big, exciting finish to the tournament.

March 28, 2022 England / West Indies

Pretty soon someone is going to prise the brush out of Joe Root’s automaton fingers

3 minute readIf you needed to sum up England’s latest series defeat in a single quote, you could do a lot worse than Joe Root’s pre-tour comment: “I don’t want this to sound like a development tour at all but…” A friend of ours tells a story about when he did a

March 25, 2022 England / West Indies

That day when a third of the highlights were a 10th wicket partnership

2 minute readIt’s probably best to avoid extrapolating from that England innings in a bid to predict the course of this Test match. England went to Grenada and were at various points 53-3, 53-6, 114-9 and 204-9. This all added up to one of the weirdest-arsed scorecards you are ever likely to

March 23, 2022 Australia / England / Features

Shane Warne: The greatest foe

6 minute readNo man is an island and no team is either. The team you support is only part of the equation. Opponents elevate a match. Opponents like Shane Warne. Many words have been spoken and written about Shane Warne in recent weeks; about why he was such an incredible leg-spinner; about

March 21, 2022 England / West Indies

Kraigg Brathwaite does not plan to get out

2 minute read“I had my plan,” said Kraigg Brathwaite after batting for five minutes short of 16 hours against England in the second Test in Bridgetown. “They bowled well, but I stuck with my plan and it paid off.” Whatever Brathwaite’s plan is, getting out doesn’t seem to be a major component.

March 17, 2022 England

The three best parts of Dan Lawrence’s bowling action in escalating order of greatness

3 minute readEvery bowler has their own bowling action, but Dan Lawrence’s is more obviously his own than most. These are the three best moments in it. (3) The flail-and-drag Not wishing the batter to be under any illusions that he might be about to see a normal bowling action, Lawrence commences

March 16, 2022 Australia / Pakistan

Babar Azam and the distribution of superheroes

2 minute readWe believe every international cricket team should be issued with at least one superhero. It keeps things interesting. In the years leading up to the creation of this website, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the standard of Test cricket was pretty variable. There were – as there always are