Aquileo | King Cricket | Independent, irreverent cricket writing

August 18, 2026 England / Pakistan

Is there any non-Mohammad Abbas way that Pakistan could beat England?

2 minute readIt’s hard to remember a Test match when England didn’t change their captain, or their coach, or both. Speaking of that sort of thing… Pakistan are in town! A few months ago, Pakistan had the honour of becoming the first team to be whitewashed in successive series of two or

August 17, 2026 Australia / Bangladesh

Which Australia cricketer will be taken out by Cameron Green’s last gasp safety limbo?

2 minute readDan Liebke’s anonymous former Australian cricketer has this Australia team down as a two-stroke pull-start Victa Commando lawnmower – “an absolute weapon of a thing” but also “an absolute shit of a thing to start”. Presumably that makes Bangladesh some sort of battery-powered Flymo. Halfway through a Test series, their

August 13, 2026 England

Cur-phew: Joe Root has a 100% record after making his first meaningful decision

2 minute readYou can tell Joe Root’s done this before. When you’re entirely new to the job, it’s a tall order to get through a 25-minute interview without saying anything. That’s pretty much what he managed speaking to Mike Atherton earlier this week though. Root says he’s not going to make the

August 11, 2026 England

Craptain Part II: Where do you stand on Joe Root’s second coming?

5 minute readBeing a middle-aged batter does not automatically imbue a person with the tactical, strategic, psychological and empathetic qualities that make for a good Test cricket captain. Yet this is still for the most part how we pick them. Don’t get us wrong, we love Joe Root. We love him as

August 7, 2026 England

Dan Lawrence tells us a little about this next incarnation of Captain Root, but the ghost of Sam Curran has additional information

4 minute readSo Joe Root’s England Test captain again. That, perhaps, is a topic for next week. More immediately, we’ve been given a sighter as to what this next Joe Root England team might look like and the first one has Dan Lawrence in it – which is exciting and depressing and

July 30, 2026 England

Stephen Fleming: the Unitas candidate

2 minute readStephen Fleming has been appointed England Test coach. This brings to mind the way young Grampa Simpson summed up his preference for American footballer Johnny Unitas over the more rebellious looking Joe Namath. “Now Johnny Unitas – there’s a haircut you could set your watch to.” England have tried wild

July 27, 2026 County cricket / England

The (unwitting) mid-season break

2 minute readSometimes you switch on a cricket match and you’re pretty sure Manchester are playing, but Aiden Markram’s batting with Tim Seifert, and Saqib Mahmood’s bowling, and you don’t know what clothes the teams wear any more, and you don’t know what the teams are called any more, and you suddenly

July 21, 2026 Features / West Indies

Garry Sobers: The real King Cricket, the most useful player there’s ever been

5 minute readGarry Sobers was made for cricket. More specifically, having been born with six fingers on each hand, he was made to be an umpire. It was odd then that he should spurn the world of ball counting, jumper carrying and light meter wielding in favour of mastering pretty much every

July 16, 2026 England

So why has the ECB ‘invoked the notice period’ of Brendon McCullum’s Test contract and not his white ball contract again?

3 minute readIf we were going to sack an England Test coach, we wouldn’t announce it in the middle of an England Test match. Sorry, let us rephrase that. If we were going to ‘invoke the notice period’ of an England Test coach, we wouldn’t announce it in the middle of an

July 14, 2026 Match report

Crowd knobhead analysis for the England v India women’s Test match at Lord’s

3 minute readDaisy writes… King Cricket commissioned me to analyse the crowd at the recent women’s Test match at Lord’s. The null hypothesis: that the proportion of the crowd who are knobheads is the same at women’s Test matches and men’s Test matches. The alternative hypothesis: that proportionally far fewer knobheads attend