When Alana King did a Shane Warne
Dunkley was the poor prop in King’s magic trick as Australia went onto whitewash England 16-0 in the Ashes
Alex Malcolm01-Feb-2025Whenever Shane Warne bowled, every bowl felt like an individual event. You couldn’t take your eyes off it because something special might happen.In this series, every ball Alana King bowled felt like an event. At the MCG she delivered an individual “money can’t buy” experience for the lucky fans who were watching. Luckily for those who weren’t, social media will ensure the delivery will live in perpetuity, consumable as a clip at any moment as often as wanted.Sophia Dunkley was the poor prop in King’s magic trick. Unlike Mike Gatting, she knew the moment she heard the death rattle exactly what had happened to her. She dared not look back. But the replay will be kind to her, no matter how deflating it will be to watch.King said after day one she hoped Warne was watching from on high and enjoying her ripping a few legbreaks in front of the MCG’s southern stand that bears his name. Warne would have loved this one.King bounced into Dunkley, and in her words “fizzed” a beautiful legbreak out of her fingers at 72.1kph. It drifted and dropped outside leg stump. Dunkley leaned forward and presented the full face of the bat. From a surface that had 9mm of grass on it, that seamers have dominated on in the men’s game, the pink-ball gripped and spun sharply past Dunkley’s bat at the hit off stump.
Alana King, legspin magic
Shane Warne would've enjoyed that one #Ashes pic.twitter.com/BFjsxo4vG0
— ESPNcricinfo (@ESPNcricinfo) February 1, 2025
“It was a good delivery wasn’t it,” England captain Heather Knight said with a wry smile post-match.”I thought it was outstanding,” Alyssa Healy said.King was modest in her appraisal.”I’ve seen one replay of it, so I can’t really give it a lot of thought,” King said. “But I’m just stoked that I did it at the MCG with a pink ball in hand and with a baggy green on as well. So it’s pretty special.”What King did in this series was pretty special. She was not selected to bowl a single ball in Australia’s T20 World Cup campaign last year. Her first four Test matches had yielded four wickets at 60.50.In the last Ashes series, she played just three of the seven matches, taking four wickets at 41.75. Eighteen months later she is player of the Ashes, with 23 wickets at 11.17 with two five-wicket hauls, including nine in the Test match, to equal the multi-format series wickets record.”I think she’s improved a hell of a lot as a cricketer and as a spinner,” Knight said. “I think the last couple of years she’s really added more revs to what she does. I think she found the pace quite well on this wicket.”She probably bowled a bit slower than she did in the white-ball stuff, and got a little bit out of the surface.”She obviously drifts the ball quite a lot as well. She gets that side spin. And, yeah, that was a pretty good ball to Dunkley.”But we need to find ways to play her a bit better. I think finding a way to counteract what she was doing and try and find a way to score runs and try and put her off her length a little bit. But certainly she’s been really challenging and bowled particularly well.”Related
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She was a captain’s dream for Healy. In both innings of the Test match, she bowled unchanged for her entire spells, never once looking unthreatening.”Just the impact she was able to have every time she had the ball in the hand,” Healy said. “Something felt like it was going to happen and she never let one of the English batters settle at any point in time. So for me, that’s exactly what you want from your spin attack in any of the formats, and Kingy was able to provide that. So I’m pretty proud of her.”For King, it’s been a long road trying to master a difficult craft. A road that’s included a move across the country from Victoria to Western Australia, away from family and friends, all in pursuit of becoming the best legspinner she can possibly be.”I’m trying to enjoy it as much as I can, and I try to do it with a big smile on my face, because legspin is probably not the easiest gig going around,” King said. “There’s going to be hard times when you’re doing some training sessions and it’s not coming out as well as it has been, and that can be back-to-back sessions. You might feel great one day and feel absolutely rubbish the next day, but it’s the work that’s gone in, not just in this series, but in the years before that, to help me get to this level.”But every time that I put on the Australian shirt, I absolutely have a ball. Whether I do well or not, it’s for the team. And to see this team go 16-0 in a pretty big series is something that I’m pretty proud of.”King made it look easy throughout these Ashes and tormented England with some deliveries that will live long in the memory.