King Cricket

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

July 5, 2021 Regulars

An animal rider being conspicuously indifferent to cricket

< 1 minute readRegular King Cricket correspondent Ged Ladd has some extremely exciting Rob Key news. We are especially pleased with the revelation contained within his final sentence because the activity described is one in which we pride ourself. The knowledge that our hero is also a keen practitioner is deeply gladdening. Regular

July 2, 2021 Australia / England / Features

Who unfurled the funnier bad leave when Darren Gough reduced Australia to 65-8 at the SCG – David Boon or Steve Waugh?

4 minute readWe love an ill-advised leave. We love Darren Gough. We love Australian batsmen ill-advisedly leaving Darren Gough. We’ve just been watching Darren Gough bowling Australia out in the 1994-95 Ashes because, you know, why not? (If you want to gain an insight into the King Cricket editorial/creative process, we were

June 30, 2021 Australia / England

The most exciting series right now is clearly the one with Tim Bresnan in it

< 1 minute readWith all due respect to the England v Sri Lanka one-day international series (almost none) and the West Indies v South Africa T20 series (a reasonable amount), surely the most exciting men’s series taking place right now is the one where the scoreline is 2-1 heading into the fourth Test.

June 29, 2021 Match report

An epic tale of watching the 2019 World Cup Final in Bentota

5 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. Equally, if it’s an amateur match, please go into excruciating detail. King Cricket reader and semi-regular contributor Ritesh

June 28, 2021 England / India

Either Tammy Beaumont is dominating bowling attacks exactly as much as they allow her to or she’s not telling us something

< 1 minute readAs an elite cricketer, you can approach your cricket however you want. The important thing is that no matter what approach you take, you have to tell everyone you’re being positive and aggressive and dominant. In cricket, certain words are right and certain other words are wrong. We’ve lost count

Stranger things have happened. This is English cricket after all. You might come to Rew the day you wrote this…

We keep wilfully suppressing the urge to write more equivocally on this. But yeah, that would be a corker.

To be fair to the ECB, they also haven't been averse to picking Second XI Somerset players over the first-teamers.

England now have the opportunity to do the funniest, funniest, funniest thing possible and pick Zak Crawley again.

It has to be said that those who suffer the neck-breathing are presumably the least likely to willingly open the…

Did you see… Harry Brook’s first ball in Melbourne? Unquestionably the 2025/26 Ashes’ finest moment

Sky Sports has boiled its Ashes coverage down to its purest and greatest form: Mike Atherton and Nasser Hussain standing there talking about what’s gone wrong

The 2019 Ridiculous Ashes (podcast)

The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments is definitely out now – you should buy it for someone! (Possibly yourself)

51. Michael Vaughan Declines A Crushing