King Cricket

July 23, 2020 England

Which England pace bowler will throw the biggest strop if he isn’t picked for the Third Test?

4 minute readThe ‘nice problem to have’ cliché klaxon is ringing out deafeningly this week. England need to take two full seam attacks and turn them into one. Three of the six pace bowlers to have appeared in this series so far will be selected for the third Test and three of

July 22, 2020 England / Features

Let’s rate the ‘serious face’ of every England player in the trailer for The Edge

4 minute readHere’s a trailer for The Edge, that documentary about the England team that got to number one in the world and then fell apart. We had ten questions about an earlier trailer, but this second one really ramped up the seriousness. NO ENGLAND TEAM FELL HARDER says one of the

July 22, 2020 Extras

How are you finding the fake crowd noise during the lockdown Tests? This sound engineer reckons they could be doing a lot more with it

4 minute readWith no fans allowed inside cricket grounds due to the coronavirus crisis, Sky Sports and Test Match Special have been broadcasting fake crowd noise for atmosphere. Could they be doing a better job with this? Crowd noise is very important in cricket. It’s important for atmosphere, obviously, but it can

July 21, 2020 England / West Indies

Two cricketers in one? Let’s count how many cricketers Ben Stokes was in this Test alone (and then let’s name them)

3 minute readPeople often say that Ben Stokes is two cricketers in one. This seems very disrespectful. If you’ve never seen or read Altered Carbon, the story is set in a future where people can transfer their consciousnesses into different bodies or ‘sleeves’. The technology was originally devised so that people could

July 20, 2020 Extras / Features

Which Test nation’s top five wicket takers would form the most balanced attack?

4 minute readThanks to all our Patreon patrons for funding this site. There’s no way this kind of feature would appear in a proper publication. Your crowdfunding makes this pointless cobblers possible. If you enjoy the site and feel it’s worth a quid (or the cost of a pint) each month, you

July 17, 2020 England / West Indies

What can we learn from Dom Sibley’s not-very-exuberant hundred celebration?

2 minute readLate in the morning session of day two of the second Test between England and the West Indies, Dom Sibley once again awoke from his fitful batting slumbers and actually hit the ball. This particular diversion from his default approach of not hitting the ball took him to a 312-ball

July 15, 2020 England

Looking back on the rarely-that-highs and not-especially-lows of Joe Denly’s Test career

4 minute readJoe Denly is an unbelievable Test cricketer. You’ll note that we’re saying ‘is’ and not ‘was’ there. That’s because of the specific way in which Joe Denly is/was unbelievable. Sometimes you only need to do so much to get the gig. And sometimes you only need to do so much

July 11, 2020 England / West Indies

Choose Your Weapons with Ben Stokes and Jason Holder

4 minute readLet’s talk about picking bowling attacks. Let’s use the first Test between England and the West Indies as a case study and, for an extra frisson of excitement, let’s do this halfway through the game – that way any specifics we use can turn out to be very wrong. Because

July 9, 2020 England / West Indies

How much more responsibility could Jason Holder possibly take on?

< 1 minute readThe answer is ‘none’. None more responsibility. Jason Holder is a parsimonious line bowler of immaculate line and length. He is also a two-metre strike bowler, who seams the ball plenty. He’s a decent bat too, not to mention an absolutely peerless anti-Lumbergh of a captain. Now it turns out

July 8, 2020 England / West Indies

BBC2 Test highlights: First impressions

2 minute readTonight was the first episode of the BBC’s new Test highlights show. It’s called Today at the Test, which is a great name (although given today’s rain and its 45-minute running time, this first one should probably have been called Today at the Test Plus Quite a Bit of Other

Hey, I'm Tim! still that's a good idea. comes with the name I guess.

Agreed. Let's do it.

I think we should have an opener-hawk, not a nightwatchman or a night-hawk. Have a bowler open with Duckett then…

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.

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