< 1 minute read We literally just wanted to rehash our favourite Hundred joke in the headline. Now we have to follow-through with some semblance of an article. Just as a quick recap for those that don’t know, Manchester Originals are… The ones sponsored by McCoys “Laughing in the face of limits” (possibly delirious from medication) “Raising the bar forever higher” (but presumably very slowly because otherwise you eventually reach a point where height is meaningless and the bar’s just floating around in space) A couple of years back, they were also new. But that’s no longer the case. Thes ..read more

2 minute read The 2023 IPL will see the introduction of the Impact Player. This is a player outside the starting XI who can come in to bat, bowl or both – a sub in other words. We put it to you that tactical substitutions make cricket worse. This year’s IPL starts on March 31 with the final scheduled for May 28. They announced the Impact Player thing back in December, but we didn’t report it because honestly who gives a… How will the Impact Player rule work? Each team will list four substitutes at the toss. They will then be allowed to use one of them as their Impact Player. That player can b ..read more

2 minute read Wordle has inspired a whole slew of similar puzzle games. Here are four cricket-themed ones we’ve tried: Crickdle, Crickle, Nurdle and Stumple. Crickdle Crickdle’s creator, a British student called Ayush, emailed us about this one. It’s a player of the match guessing game where you’re given the match result and the player’s performance in that match. You get four guesses, but we got today’s in one. Come on! Crickle Crickle is the same as Wordle but with cricketer names. We actually found it quite hard to come up with names because our brain sometimes likes to have context before ..read more

2 minute read The BBC again finds itself mired in conflict after asking people to vote for its cricket podcasts instead of our one. We’re on the shortlist too, you know. How about a bit of balance and fairness? It’s been a turbulent time for the Beeb. First the leader of the world’s largest democracy attacked it for a bunch of stuff it said. Then a month or so later it attacked Gary Lineker for something he said. And now it’s shamelessly pushing its own podcasts for awards over The Ridiculous Ashes. What happened to that famed impartiality? This is just naked self interest, pure and simple ..read more

2 minute read Cricket is a mad and contrary sport. In a Test where he masterminded a successful fourth-innings run-chase with 121 not out, Kane Williamson’s most exciting contribution was to completely bloody miss the ball and run a bye. For those that don’t know, Williamson faced the scheduled final ball of the first Test between New Zealand and Sri Lanka with the scores level. Eight wickets down, they couldn’t lose, but the slowly-built anxiety of defeat still being a possibility just one ball earlier hadn’t exactly dissipated. Asitha Fernando dug it in short and Williamson attempted the ki ..read more

< 1 minute read We suppose you could plonk him in an 18-wheeler and ask him to drive from Madisonville to Baton Rouge, but other than that, the Travis Head look has basically reached its logical destination. Head’s had a moustache for a while now. We didn’t think to document the history of his top lip with a timeline, but we think he grew it in 2019. There’s a Cricket Australia video where he says he grew it during the off season through boredom. “Mixed reports from the boys so far,” he said. “I think the more they hate it, probably the more it’ll stay” – which is an admirably sociopathic ..read more

5 minute read Do you know England’s first-choice XI for the upcoming 50-over World Cup? Do England? There’s a lot of job sharing in the various England teams these days. Players flit in and flit out to the extent that it’s actually pretty hard to identify the first choice XI. That’s mostly okay because generally you don’t ever get to play your first choice XI anyway. But then it’s a World Cup and finally you do. So who’s in England’s? Or – more interestingly – who isn’t? Rejuvenation, experimentation, ambivalence They may be 50-over world champions, but England haven’t exactly been an all-con ..read more

< 1 minute read If you’ve got a picture of an animal being conspicuously indifferent to cricket, please send it to king@kingcricket.co.uk. Daisy writes… Ged and I went to a supper and talk at Lord’s about the book Being Geoffrey Boycott. Ged has written up the evening. On arrival, when we first looked out of the window, we saw a fox on that resplendent Lord’s pitch. A magnificent fox, it was. You get a very high class of fox in St John’s Wood. Ged said that the fox looked indifferent to cricket and that we needed a photograph for King Cricket. But by the time I got my camera/phone out, the ..read more

4 minute read Few England players have deployed the long handle as delightfully as Moeen Ali. But which element is the more lovely – his backlift or his follow-through? Like all sentient humans, we make a point of devoting one day each month to appreciation of Brian Lara’s backlift. A byproduct of this is that we sometimes find ourself pondering the best of the rest. And that’s how we ended up watching a bunch of videos of Moeen Ali slogging fours and sixes. We’re not quite sure where Moeen Ali’s ranks in the pantheon of backlifts, but it’s pretty high up when it comes to England players. We ..read more

3 minute read Jimmy Anderson has played 179 Test matches and he was completely pissed off to lose this one by a single run. Jimmy Anderson is a quite majestically irritable cricketer. The penultimate ball of the second Test between New Zealand and England could, and probably technically should, have been called a wide. Nobody at the Basin Reserve in Wellington really wanted the scores to move level with an extra though. Nobody except Jimmy Anderson anyway. Next ball Anderson was out and honestly, sport’s whole meaning and impact is built on someone involving having and displaying this level o ..read more