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May 21, 2021 County cricket

The best part of Darren Stevens’ frankly insane 190 was what happened next

< 1 minute readKent’s Darren Stevens has been making some incredible things happen in recent years. This season in particular. In fact he’s now reached a point where he is making bonkers things happen even when he’s no longer in the middle. If you don’t already know what happened today, 45-year-old Darren Stevens

May 21, 2021 England / India

Will England and India bin the Old Trafford Test?

2 minute readWe’re intrigued by the formality of cricket board requests. India have asked England if the whole of the upcoming Test series can be shunted forwards a week or alternatively whether the fifth Test, at Old Trafford, could be cancelled. But they’ve apparently only done this “informally”. So it’s not an

May 19, 2021 Australia / England / India / New Zealand

Chris Silverwood respectfully disrespects New Zealand and India

2 minute read“With all due respect…” people say, or “No offence but…” What follows these phrases is somehow never respectful or inoffensive. England coach and selector Chris Silverwood (we warned you he’d try and become a ‘supremo’) didn’t actually plump for either of those options when speaking about the summer ahead earlier

May 17, 2021 Australia

Cricket Australia asks Cameron Bancroft if he’s going to remove more things from beneath the carpet

2 minute readSo some of the bowlers did know? “Uh … yeah, look, I think, yeah, I think it’s pretty probably self-explanatory.” It’s hard to say whether Cameron Bancroft finally grew weary of pretending that it was only he, Steve Smith and David Warner who knew about the sandpapering or whether he

May 13, 2021 Australia

Why it would apparently be a “tragedy” if Steve Smith didn’t get to be Australia captain again

2 minute readInternational cricket’s longest-serving stand-in Test captain, Tim Paine (oh come on, he is), has been talking about whether Steve Smith could one day replace him. Paine told Cricinfo that when he first came into the Australia Test team, Smith was, “growing into that role and getting better and better. Then

May 12, 2021 Match report

Yard and beach cricket in April – a match report

2 minute readSend your match reports to king@kingcricket.co.uk. We’re only interested in what it was like to be at the game, 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. King Cricket reader and regular contributor Sam

May 10, 2021 England / India

Rahul Dravid makes a pretty good point about India’s Test tour of England

2 minute readWe tend to think of the ‘bio-bubble’ imposed on touring cricketers as an oppressive, negative thing. But there is an upside – at least from a purely cricket point of view. Thanks to the way the world has been this last year or so, it’s perhaps a little easier for

May 6, 2021 India

So who is ‘playing for humanity’ now then?

< 1 minute readThe thing about talking grandiose self-serving bollocks is that not only does it expose your fundamental hollowness, but the fundamental meaninglessness of what you said may well also be exposed. Late last month, as the IPL scrabbled towards its inevitable postponement, the most eye-poppingly you-don’t-even-believe-this-yourself justification for continuing came from

May 4, 2021 County cricket

Making sense of the County Championship 40% of the way through the group stage

2 minute readIt’s very early May and it basically feels like winter, but we’re already well on the way to establishing the three divisions that will comprise the second phase of this year’s County Championship. (Here’s an explanation of how the Championship and other competitions will work this year.) 18 teams is

May 1, 2021 England / Features / South Africa

Why ‘overnight’ is such an important part of a five-day Test match

2 minute readWhenever a Test is decided late on the fifth day, there’s much talk about how that kind of tension and excitement wouldn’t happen with four-day Tests. It’s half true. This is why. If you move a deadline, you don’t negate it. Even if a Test match has no fifth day,