Did you see… Tom Latham fleeing from the ball?

2 minute read

New Zealand dropped an honestly comical number of chances on day two of the first Test – most of them from Harry Brook. Tom Latham’s at slip was our favourite.

Friend of this website, Dr The Scientician was once outside a busy university library when there was a fire drill. As countless people responded to the deafening alarm by pouring out of the building, he spotted one guy walking the opposite way, carving his way through the throng, wearing headphones.

This image has always amused us. When there is only one way to sensibly go and someone goes the exact opposite way, it is funny.

With England 126-4, Harry Brook edged high to first slip where Tom Latham could only succeed in parrying the ball.

So far, so familiar. This is where it got fun though. Latham thought the ball had gone behind him, so he set off to try to catch it at the second attempt.

Only the ball hadn’t gone behind him. It had in fact gone pretty much straight up. But look at him go!

Your absolute overriding goal as a fielder is to catch the ball before it hits the turf after it has come off the bat. That’s basically what you’re there for. Here was a ball dropping from the sky in the gentlest, friendliest parabola imaginable and set to land exactly where Latham had been standing. And he was, essentially, fleeing.

This would in itself have made for an excellent missed chance, but New Zealand’s captain then put the top hat on it by extending his upturned hands in the vain hope the ball might just by complete chance plop into one of them.

It didn’t for the simple reason that it was at that very moment landing on the grass directly behind him.

Look at that image above. Isn’t there something quite exquisite about the way the back of Latham’s head is so perfectly trained on the ball as it hits the ground even while he is still trying to catch it?

New Zealand did take one decent catch – a ludicrous horizontal diving effort from Glenn Phillips – but we’ve seen that kind of thing before.

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The post Did you see… Tom Latham fleeing from the ball? first appeared on King Cricket.

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1. Tom Latham can see the future (+ video)
2. How do you stop Harry Brook? We’ll tell you how
3. Ben Stokes hits the ball hard

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Are you ready for Kane Williamson? Because Kane Williamson is abnormally ready for you

5 minute read

Kane Williamson has been injured. In his first Test back, he made 93. This is how he does it. This is how he’s always done it. This is how he has to do it.

Sometimes it’s a ‘big three’, sometimes it’s a ‘fab four’, other times it’s a head-to-head comparison that only involves half of them, but Kane Williamson, Virat Kohli, Joe Root and Steve Smith have long rubbed up against each other in the same editorial space.

This makes sense. They all made their Test debuts within a couple of years of each other, they’ve all played over 100 Tests and they’ve all at one time or another averaged over 50 in Test cricket. (Kohli is the only one who currently doesn’t.)

At the same time, we always think that one of these four men just fundamentally plays a different game to the other three. Specifically, we think how the hell has Kane Williamson got to 100 Tests when he plays for New Zealand?

Readiness

There are people in this world who walk around just absolutely primed for verbal combat. Some inadvertent slight or misunderstanding occurs – a food order not quite right or some minor confusion at a junction – and they are ON IT.

‘How did you get there?’ you wonder. How did you soar to maximal rage so quickly without any obvious groundwork to build from? Do you just pass your whole life simmering away combustibly, awaiting a spark?

Kane Williamson is also inexplicably ready – only Kane is ready to bat in a Test match.

It doesn’t matter where, or when, or what he’s been doing in the preceding weeks and months. He’s just ready.

The start

Have you ever been to Ahmedabad? Ahmedabad is different. We had already been in India for about four months when we emerged from the railway station there and even then it felt like a culture shock.

We’d come from Ellora, way further south, and suddenly there were camels on the road. Maybe we’re misremembering, but our recollection is that these camels were also disconcertingly massive – bigger than the one in the image below.

If you are from a place with camels and this doesn’t seem all that weird to you, let us tell you that when you first find yourself sat in an autorickshaw, in a traffic jam, alongside a camel, you become acutely aware that you are in a very different place. (To be clear, the camel is alongside the tuk-tuk in this description, not alongside you on the back seat – it’s not cadging a lift or anything.)

The point here is that India’s a bit of a sensory overload for a newcomer and Ahmedabad can feel pretty overwhelming even when you’ve been there a while. (It’s probably a good job we didn’t arrive there a week later.)

It was in Ahmedabad where Kane Williamson made his Test debut in November 2010. If you’re from Tauranga, Ahmedabad will give you a lot to think about and a first Test innings presumably brings quite a significant mental load too.

New Zealand were 137-4 when he walked out, quite some way adrift of India’s 487. Williamson batted for six and a half hours and scored 131.

The starts

Start as you mean to go on, we suppose. But starting well is doubly important when you play for New Zealand for whom Test series are routinely shorn of a middle, let alone an end.

In 2014, India toured Australia and in the first Test, in Adelaide, Steve Smith and Virat Kohli made hundreds. Because of who they play for, and who they were playing against, both men were able to exploit that form – the two of them also made hundreds in the fourth Test. In all, Smith made 769 runs in that series at an average of 128.16, while Kohli made 692 at an average of 86.50.

Williamson has never made more than 428 runs in a series, because the longest one he has ever played only comprised three matches.

He can achieve a lot in just two Tests though. When South Africa toured earlier this year, he made three hundreds in four innings. Twice – against Bangladesh in 2019 and against Pakistan in 2022 – his first innings of a series has been 200 not out.

Playing the West Indies in 2020, Williamson only got to bat the once and so he made 251. A week or two later, he encountered Pakistan. He made 129 in the first Test and 238 in the second.

Kane Williamson: Lord Megachief of Gold 2020/2021

There are pros and cons to this, of course. It’s not just batters who benefit from getting into a groove, after all. The hit and run nature of Williamson’s Test career also means that opposition bowlers don’t get quite so long to hone their plans, so he sidesteps that a little. He also gets to keep his eye in by playing almost every New Zealand match in all three formats, whereas Australia, England and India players tend to charge towards burnout until ‘workload management’ intervenes or one format or another quietly drifts away from them.

What’s far more important is the earth-shudderingly obvious fact that different grounds and opponents have become but a flickering backdrop to the constant that is Williamson’s Test run-scoring.

Here’s a particularly good one. In a 12-month period from February last year, he hit seven hundreds in seven Test matches, at six different grounds, against four different teams.

Really, it’s just different. Williamson’s 103-Test career accumulated in twos and threes is markedly distinct from Root’s 150-Test career that has mostly arrived in threes, fours and fives. We can’t really say whether that makes his achievements better or worse; more or less significant. There will be people out there who demand answers, but there seems little point to us working to develop a method for apple-orange comparison.

He is good at what he does. He is fit for purpose.

Pack a bag, warm the jet engines and set the Test schedule to ‘shuffle’ – Kane Williamson will be ready.

---

We’re not looking to prick Anglo/Kiwi pride here or anything, but it’s striking to us that thus far Border-Gavaskar-related pint-buying has been considerably outpacing Crowe-Thorpe-related pint-buying.

That’s fine. In the field of pint-drinking, we’re as adaptable and unflappable as Kane Williamson. We’re just a bit surprised because most of our audience is from the UK. We assume it’s largely because many British would-be buyers are long-term Patreon backers of this website and are therefore already moistening us monthly.

Thanks to all of you.

That game when Kane Williamson’s most exciting contribution was a bye

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2. Kane Williamson bats with the strength of many men
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Jasprit Bumrah v Australia’s top four

3 minute read

Would it be fair to say that Jasprit Bumrah had the better of Australia’s top order in Perth? Not really. Not unless you also feel the Death Star had the better of Alderaan. So is there any cause for optimism for these batters beyond the timeless fallback, “well surely it can’t get any worse”?

If it weren’t for the bit where they got bowled out for 104, and the bit where they conceded 487-6, and the bit where they fell to 17-4 chasing 534 to win, Australia would have had an okay game in the first Test.

Those things did happen though and the almost total lack of runs from their top four was a pretty significant element.

Not coincidentally, Usman Khawaja, Nathan McSweeney, Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith are the men tasked with getting through Jasprit Bumrah’s opening spell.

Australia’s stand-in captain felt Dantooine was too remote to make an effective demonstration, so this is what we got instead…

• Khawaja: 8 and 4 – one dismissal to Bumrah
• McSweeney: 10 and 0 – twice dismissed by Bumrah
• Labuschagne: 2 and 3 – one dismissal to Bumrah
• Smith: 0 and 17 – one dismissal to Bumrah

We suppose you could also throw in the nightwatchthree, Pat Cummins, who made 2 in the second innings after being dismissed by Bumrah for 3 in his regular number eight spot in the first.

Shall we play ‘taking the positives’?

The leap from Smith’s first innings golden duck to his second innings 17 was colossal and almost certainly resulted from dropping even further down the order. Maybe he should become a leg-spinner again and bat at number nine.

Failing failure Steve Smith to hide down the order after abject failure as Test opener

Labuschagne too came on in absolute leaps and bounds after self-demoting below his captain. He took 52 balls to make 2 in the first innings, but surpassed that tally just three balls into his second knock.

Labuschagne then also survived his fourth ball, an achivement which is very much worth highlighting given that he could and should have been out to Bumrah second ball in the first innings.

The man who dropped that chance was of course Virat Crawley, who came out and made a hundred in India’s second innings.

If nothing else, that development goes to show that nothing’s etched in stone. Maybe Grand Moff Tarkin won’t be quite so trigger happy in Adelaide next week.

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The post Jasprit Bumrah v Australia’s top four first appeared on King Cricket.

Related posts:

1. Was Jasprit Bumrah’s yorker to Ollie Pope the best since Waqar Younis?
2. ‘Enough’ runs from Virat Kohli for India, Jasprit Bumrah the ventriloquist, South Africa’s theoretical snowball + more from the T20 World Cup final
3. Ranked: All eight deliveries in Stuart Broad’s world record 35-run over to Jasprit Bumrah

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King Cricket Test tour SPECIAL OFFERS

3 minute read

Obviously we’ll be covering England’s Test tour of New Zealand and India’s of Australia whether you buy us a pint or not… but hey, we wouldn’t say no…

Sorry about all the Patreon-related posting of late. We’ll get back to the actual cricket after this one, we promise. We just want to highlight a new thing.

Cricket has many teams, many tours and many formats and it is pretty obvious that not all of us care about all of them. Even within the seemingly narrow readership of this website, no-one agrees. Much as we’d like to think you all hang on every word we write, we grumpily acknowledge that quite often many of you don’t give a flying full toss about some of the topics we cover.

That’s a bit of a hurdle when it comes to asking for ongoing Patreon funding. Why would you make a monthly pledge when we’re likely to spend so much of the time you’d be funding writing about the County Championship or the T20 World Cup or David Lloyd’s unoccupied hand?

We’re therefore trialling one-off payments for particular tours or tournaments, so that you can specifically fund us for a thing you’re interested in and not for all that other crap.

We’re starting with two tours:

1. India’s five-Test tour of Australia, which gets underway this week
2. England’s three-Test tour of New Zealand, which gets underway with a tour match this weekend

Pricing: roughly one pint

We’d like to invite you to buy us a pint for covering one or other of these tours (or you can even go wild and fund us for both).

The price for the England tour is our best guess at what we think is a reasonable price for a pint in New Zealand (£4.60 – which is roughly 10 NZD).

The price for the India tour was going to be the equivalent for Australia, but the research all got a bit confusing so in the end we just went with 10 AUD (£5.15).

Unless there’s an unprecedented rush at the e-bar, we won’t actually be doing anything different content-wise. Pint-buyers will however gain access to a hastily-generated AI image relating to the special offer in question, because apparently you can’t sell a ‘digital product’ on Patreon without offering a downloadable thing. (Actually, in each case you’ll get two such images, because we struggled to settle on favourites. It’s also worth pointing out that all monthly Patreon backers will automatically get access to these images by default.)

If there’s any interest in these one-off pint payments, we’ll probably do it again for future tours, series and tournaments. It won’t be dead often though. And it’ll only be for stuff we’d be covering anyway.

Here’s another link to the England in New Zealand one pint offer.

Here’s another to the India in Australia one pint offer.

And here’s one to our main Patreon page if you’re feeling particularly flush and fancy funding us longer-term.

The post King Cricket Test tour SPECIAL OFFERS first appeared on King Cricket.

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1. We’ve tweaked the King Cricket crowdfunder – and you might want to make a tweak too
2. If you’d like to chip in to support King Cricket, you can (please do)
3. An update on the King Cricket Patreon campaign

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Some bloke catching another bloke in a 2001 charity match (a match report)

2 minute read

Send your match reports to king@kingcricket.co.uk. We’re only really interested in your own experience, so if it’s a professional match, on no account mention the cricket itself. (But if it’s an amateur match, feel free to go into excruciating detail.)

Ged Ladd’s official cricket biographer, Herbert Ackgrass, writes…

The match in question was the traditional Ged Ladd & Co v Charley the Gent’s Charity XI in June 2001. However, this match report focuses on one dismissal – per the scorebook: Charley the Gent, c Ged, b David, 20.

Nothing especially unusual about that: a high but not unprecedented score for Chas, while Ged has been known to hold on to catches occasionally.

Of interest is the subsequent clash of words between those two titans of the game, because the e-archive contains some telling correspondence – in particular Charley The Gent’s response to Ged’s reference to “the dolly catch”.

Chas’s reply is a masterpiece of denial, worthy of the great King-Cricketer Laurence Elderbrook himself:

“As I recall I was being verbally abused by some of your close-in fielders – and to my dismay some of my own team on the sidelines.

“The innings was low scoring, wickets were tumbling around me, and it was almost impossible to get a bat near any ball, given the wides, no-balls and balls trickling along the ground.

“In an attempt to satisfy everyone, I attempted a pull shot to leg, only to be temporarily blinded by a shining white vision, which turned out to be Ged’s brand new cricket whites.”

Despite a much impoverished Ged Ladd & Co bowling attack, the reluctant bowler who got Chas, David, was bowling superbly and had just completed a hat trick with the last ball of his previous over. Chas’s misjudged pull resulted in a rare ”four-in-four” or “double-hat-trick”, depending on your choice of term.

Bowler David was the same David who had led to Ged’s “Bob Willis spotted in a wine bar” incident a few years earlier.

Also worth noting is that Charley the Gent’s June 2001 e-whinge dates Ged Ladd’s shiny white cricket troos at spring 2001, not 2002 or 2003 as previously reported on this site.

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The post Some bloke catching another bloke in a 2001 charity match (a match report) first appeared on King Cricket.

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The next innings of social media – following-on

3 minute read

Using social media sites has always felt to us a little like building a user base for someone else’s website. We did however enjoy using Twitter in a casual, in-the-moment, thinking-out-loud kind of way and we always felt that worked well while games were actually in progress. But now it doesn’t work so well. So what next?

The comedian Frank Skinner used to tell a story about a gig he once did in Bournemouth. When he asked an audience member what life was like in the town, the response was so negative that Skinner asked whether he’d ever thought of leaving. In utter confusion, the guy replied: “But my house is here.”

The point here is that you are in fact free to leave rubbish places.

We’ve never been to Bournemouth, but we know what a faded seaside town feels like. For quite a while now, that’s essentially what Twitter’s been. It’s conspicuously quiet and nothing works quite right. You can sort of see what the place once was, but the general atmosphere is that life has moved on. It’s all a bit ghostly and empty – although before too long you’ll probably bump into a racist.

We’ve been keen to leave, but no-one’s really been sure where to go: Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky? Instagram? TikTok? Back to Facebook?

We therefore settled on the course of action we always adopt when people argue about where to go next. We sat still and waited without at any point venturing an opinion of our own.

In the last day or so, it’s felt like the balance might have tipped towards Bluesky. Even with only about 3% of the followers we have on Twitter, it’s seemed more active and people are clearly pouring through the doors right now.

These things always turn sour eventually, but for the time being at least, we’re going to give it a whirl. Here’s our Bluesky profile if you fancy following us.

It’ll mostly amount to early access to the same jokes we make on here but with a greater number of typos. We’ll follow you back because we’re pretty sure it’s the same rules as situations where you feel obliged to say ‘morning’ to a fellow tribesperson (hiker/parent/cyclist or whatever).

We do have a Mastodon account as well, but that’s just a placeholder thing really should Bluesky at some point develop an unsavoury musk.

Obviously sign up for this website’s email as well, which is the main, obvious way to follow us in a world where social network eras are shorter than the careers of England seam bowlers.

Some other things to watch out for

Partly off the back of this, we’re currently having a bit of a tidy-up around here. As we remove Twitter links from menus, sidebars and email templates, we’re unavoidably spotting other stuff that could do with a lick of paint (or being chucked away).

The goal here is obviously to make the website work smoothly and correctly. But, you know… goals are there to be missed. In our experience, you start mucking about with this stuff and some component or other will fall over or explode. Apologies in advance for any resultant shrapnel.

We’re not doing anything major, but if there are any changes you don’t like, just let us know. We figure we can’t please everyone, but we may as well strive for a decent breadth of grumpy tolerance.

The post The next innings of social media – following-on first appeared on King Cricket.

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Did you see… Jos Buttler’s biggest six?

3 minute read

“Room for improvement” has become such a desirable attribute among England players that a “high ceiling” now feels like almost a mandatory requirement for selection. It’s instructive then to remember how England’s greatest ever white ball batter, Jos Buttler, came into the national side with almost zero headroom.

If you tend to tune out from selection explanations and don’t know what we’re talking about here, players with “a high ceiling” are adequate cricketers who, for one reason or another, are thought to have more room for improvement than similarly skilled alternatives.

Shoaib Bashir is one recent example. Josh Hull is another. These guys are picked not so much for what they are now, but for what they could become.

Jos Buttler though? How much has he improved since he first came into the England team? Not very much at all, we’d say. He’s changed roles a little, gone up the order, taken on a fair bit more responsibility. But has he actually become any better? Probably a bit. He became more consistent – although that was probably as much to do with the fact he almost exclusively batted at ‘the death’ in the early part of his career.

When Buttler first came into the one-day team, we described the selection decision as being, “like fancying a pint and having to choose between two doorways: one is open and leads to your favourite pub; the other is bricked-up and you suspect the building used to be an abbattoir.”

At this point he was averaging 70.57 in one-day cricket, scoring at 128 runs per 100 balls. England had also sent him on a five-match Lions tour, just to be certain. He scored 102 off 56 balls, 40 off 34 balls, 119 off 130 balls, 1 off 3 balls and 64 off 31 balls.

They had to pick him. In his seventh ODI innings, he made 47 off 16 balls. A year after that, he had his first hundred (and a 99) even though he’d been batting almost exclusively at number seven.

The stats from this period aren’t incredible, but this is largely because of what he was being asked to do. When a batter needs to score most quickly, their dismissal is unavoidably more likely, but the whole point of Jos Buttler is that he was always less affected by this than anyone else.

The T20 format is awash with chancy sloggers who live off the glory of the rare days when their modus operandi comes off, but right from the start Buttler stood out for his ability to serve up surprisingly reliable irresponsible batting.

At this point, all we really want from Buttler is for him to remain as claustrophobically close to his ceiling as he has generally always been. In his first match back after injury, Phil Salt – the man who has replaced him both behind the stumps and at the top of the order for this T20 series against the West Indies – made an unbeaten 103 off 54 balls and Buttler made a golden duck.

Quite the contrast. But then here’s another one: in the second game it was Salt’s turn to get out first ball. Buttler duly stepped in to score 83 off 45 balls.

It was all nicely familiar. You’ll be able to envision the wrist-snap boundaries without even seeing them and there was also that ramp shot he’s played brilliantly since forever. (Back in 2013, we said he often seemed unaware the pitch had sides with his tendency to forge a two-spoked wagon wheel behind bowler and wicketkeeper.)

There was also a colossal six off Gudakesh Motie.

Has he ever hit a bigger one? “Probably not actually.”

So there’s something new.

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The post Did you see… Jos Buttler’s biggest six? first appeared on King Cricket.

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Sunrise without enlightenment – a Sunrisers v South East Stars match report

2 minute read

Send your match reports to king@kingcricket.co.uk. We’re only really interested in your own experience, so if it’s a professional match, on no account mention the cricket itself. (But if it’s an amateur match, feel free to go into excruciating detail.)

Ged Ladd writes…

DAISY: So who are the Sunrisers?

GED: They are the women’s franchise comprising Middlesex and other neighbouring counties, such as Essex and Northamptonshire.

DAISY: I thought that was London Spirit.

GED: London Spirit is a “The Hundred” franchise – except we’re not supposed to call those ones franchises – whereas Sunrisers is a franchise for 50-over and Twenty20 cricket.

DAISY: That makes no sense.

GED: None of the domestic cricket makes sense at the moment.

DAISY: Where’s the DJ? Where’s the razzamatazz? Where’s the crowd?

GED: The ECB wants to promote The Hundred, so domestic Twenty20 gets the dregs.

DAISY: How many of the players do you recognise?

GED: Frankly, apart from the international players I don’t recognise any of them. This is only the second time I have been to a women’s domestic match.

DAISY: They aren’t very forthcoming on the big screen or the tannoy either. How many Middlesex players are playing for Sunrisers today?

GED: No idea.

DAISY: Are any of today’s Sunrisers actually Middlesex players then?

GED: Possibly not… (Googles a bit) …I don’t think so.

DAISY: Then why should we support Sunrisers?

GED: Because they are Middlesex’s team, that’s why. Sunrisers are the team included in your Middlesex membership.

DAISY: I’m sold.

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The post Sunrise without enlightenment – a Sunrisers v South East Stars match report first appeared on King Cricket.

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Are there any women’s Test matches coming up? Yeah, sort of!

2 minute read

Good news, everyone! Some Women’s Tests are probably happening!

Women’s Test matches are so rare, the possibility another one might actually happen tends to be headline news.

The BBC have gone with “England to play first West Indies Test since 1979” which does a pretty good job of summing things up. It’ll be in 2027 and it’ll also be the first Test England have played over there.

The BBC article also reveals that England have further Test matches lined up against India, Australia and South Africa before the end of 2029. Busy times!

The women’s Test schedule is in fact so easy-paced that we’re happy to type it out in full. In fact we’ll do it nation by nation, even though that means highlighting each match twice.

Australia (eight Tests)

• January 2025: Home v England
• February 2026: Home v India
• March 2026: Away v West Indies
• March 2027: Away v South Africa
• July 2027: Away v England
• December 2027: Away v India
• February 2028: Home v South Africa
• February 2029: Home v England

England (eight Tests)

• December 2024: Away v South Africa
• January 2025: Away v Australia
• July 2026: Home v India
• April 2027: Away v West Indies
• July 2027: Home v Australia
• June 2028: Home v South Africa
• December 2028: Away v India
• Feburary 2029: Away v Australia

India (five Tests)

• February 2026: Away v Australia
• July 2026: Away v England
• December 2026: Away v South Africa
• December 2027: Home v Australia
• December 2028: Home v England

South Africa (six Tests)

• December 2024: Home v England
• December 2026: Home v India
• March 2027: Home v Australia
• February 2028: Away v Australia
• June 2028: Away v England
• December 2028: Home v West Indies

West Indies (three Tests)

• March 2026: Home v Australia
• April 2027: Home v England
• December 2028: Away v South Africa

These tests are probably happening?

We don’t know who wrote the ICC press release, but it is not characterised by precision of language. “Members have also pencilled in more Test matches this time,” it says at one point – which makes all of these matches sound highly provisional.

We imagine they are, but then elsewhere it says of the various planned multi-format series that, “Australia will play the maximum such series.”

The maximum? They mean the greatest number. So at that point we realised that pretty much any word in the release could in fact mean something different and therefore the whole document was basically meaningless.

Conclusion

Some women’s Test matches will be played and probably a handful more than during the last ‘cycle’.

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The post Are there any women’s Test matches coming up? Yeah, sort of! first appeared on King Cricket.

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Golden duck-off: Which was this week’s funniest? Mohammed Siraj’s or Jamie Overton’s?

3 minute read

Golden ducks are always funny, but some are funnier than others. We’ve had two absolute classics in the last 24 hours and we honestly can’t choose between them.

Imagine you’re a tennis player. You drive down to the club where you play. You get changed. You walk on court. Your opponent serves. You miss it. You immediately go home.

That scenario seems absolutely ludicrous, but, fielding aside, it’s more or less what a golden duck amounts to. And that’s why they’re magical.

Jamie Overton 0(1)

If you’re not up to speed with the Jamie Overton situation, allow us to accelerate you. England like Jamie Overton because he can bowl really quite quickly and they aren’t going to let a piffling matter like ‘not currently being fit to bowl’ prevent them from picking him.

So it was that Overton played a couple of T20 internationals against Australia as a specialist batter this summer – even though he is very definitely not a specialist batter. He came in at number seven, which is sort of a batting spot when you’ve got a bunch of all-rounders. He made 15 off 9 balls in the first match and 4 not out off 4 balls in the second.

Now Overton’s in the Caribbean where he was picked for a 50-over match even though he still can’t bowl. He came in at number eight, which isn’t even sort of a batting spot. After a long walk out to do his specialist job, he missed a sweep shot first ball and then had to walk back again.

Mohammed Siraj 0(1)

Mohammed Siraj is not a specialist batter and no-one is trying to pretend that he is. He has made 108 runs in 31 Test matches. India asked him to bat at number four today because it was late afternoon and asking your number 11 to come in at four if a wicket falls late afternoon is a standard thing in cricket because cricket is mental.

Maybe they were persuaded by that dynamite performance of his in the first Test.

Anyway, after a long walk out to watch the night, Siraj missed his first ball and was given out LBW. Perhaps keen to make the most of his time as a middle-order batter, he then reviewed the decision. But it was still out.

Siraj’s role was to prevent Virat Kohli from having to face any late afternoon deliveries (which are of course uniquely difficult for middle-order batters) so that Kohli could instead come out and score runs against the morning bowling to which he is apparently more accustomed.

Alas, the single delivery that Kohli was successfully protected from did not prove pivotal because just a few balls later he ran himself out.

Kohli has now been out of form for five years and a bit.

Discussion

It feels like the setup for Overton’s (picking a number eight batter who isn’t actually a batter) was stronger. Set against that, India really ran with things once the golden duck had been secured.

Siraj’s wasn’t merely a nightwatchduck, he threw a review in there too. And then the man he was supposedly protecting (who was Virat Kohli) ran himself out for good measure.

But then much of the beauty of the golden duck is that instant and definitive hammer blow of bathos. We’re not sure stringing people along adding further context via an epilogue is really in the spirit of things.

In short, we can’t choose. Both were delightful.

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The post Golden duck-off: Which was this week’s funniest? Mohammed Siraj’s or Jamie Overton’s? first appeared on King Cricket.

Related posts:

1. Liam Livingstone’s golden duck was one of the finest
2. The Overtons: England ponder samey attack
3. Why South Africa couldn’t possibly have come up with a more appropriate end to their tour of India than Lungi Ngidi’s bizarre golden duck

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