King Cricket

July 22, 2021 County cricket / Features

Observations after half-watching the Hundred on TV with a couple of kids milling about the place

5 minute readWe don’t really want to be an ambassador for the Hundred and nor are we in the #opposethehundred camp. Our natural habitat is the muddy middle ground, taking ineffectual potshots at both sides. But let’s for now bypass the argument about whether the competition represents the future or death of

July 20, 2021 County cricket

Will The Hundred be even a third as ludicrous as the film 300?

2 minute readA lot of people think that The Hundred is ludicrous. To these people, we ask: “Have you not seen 300? That’s truly ludicrous.” The film 300 (which we’ve just this minute found out isn’t actually called “The 300”) is about 300 Spartans attempting to fend off over 300,000 Persians. Not

July 19, 2021 England / Pakistan

Why Liam Livingstone’s huge six v Pakistan was just about the most satisfying shot ever played and also why it was not

2 minute readIn a world where every shot that drops just over the rope is MASSIVE and the ones that get caught by spectators sitting in the first row are OUT OF THE GROUND, it becomes quite hard to properly acknowledge the shot played by Liam Livingstone off Pakistan’s Haris Rauf at

July 18, 2021 England / Features / New Zealand

Netflix’s This Could Go Anywhere with Phil Tufnell and Brendon McCullum – a preview

4 minute readPiss off golf. It is a phenomenon we will never be able to wrap our head around. Cricketers liking and talking about golf. No offence to golf – which is a perfectly decent sport if you want to fake-befriend late-middle-aged men who have the power to give you a promotion

July 14, 2021 England / Features / New Zealand

Five bonkers moments from the 2019 Cricket World Cup final – but which was the most uniquely cricket?

6 minute read2019 Cricket World Cup final, England v New Zealand Cricket is at its very purest and best when it’s completely village; when the bowlers are batting and people are being run-out and everyone has to keep checking the laws and playing regulations because they don’t have the faintest idea what’s

July 14, 2021 England

James Vince and the Gower Law

2 minute readHe can bat, James Vince. That’s half the problem. James Vince innings come in many sizes, but there are only really two types. There are the ones where he’s dismissed and a much smaller number where he isn’t. The latter are tauntingly incomplete. Half-written poems, half-painted landscapes, unfinished symphonies. The

July 12, 2021 England

Did you see… James Vince’s silky, casual departure?

3 minute readIf there’s one thing we can all take from the weekend’s sporting events, it’s that England are an unstoppable winning machine. The various members of England’s one-day squad are currently sitting around their houses doing really not very much at all. And England are still winning. They just can’t stop.

July 8, 2021 England / Pakistan

England’s squad for the Pakistan ODIs doesn’t look that weird

2 minute readEngland have binned an entire one-day international squad and picked a different one. You’d think that might have resulted in some barrel-scraping. But it hasn’t really. Cannon Fodder was the first videogame we can remember that featured near-constant character turnover. It was right there in the name. Jools would get

July 7, 2021 Australia / England

Mute Flower, Rankin the Rancor and Angry Anderson

< 1 minute readSeries two of the Ridiculous Ashes draws to a close this week with a look at the Sydney Test of the 2013/14 series and England’s traditional final-Test-of-an-away-Ashes chaos. This was the match in which Gary Ballance, Boyd Rankin and Scott Borthwick all made their Test debuts. It was also a

July 6, 2021 England

It’s the England Second XI captain we feel sorry for (and also Chris ‘Dante Hicks’ Silverwood)

< 1 minute readYou may have heard that England have had to magic-up a whole new one-day squad for the Pakistan series after the first-choice one was sidelined by a bunch of coronavirus cases. Well done everyone – but that’s the easy bit. “We’re in unprecedented territory, in terms of replacing an entire