'uncontested cricket that seems to be part of the BCCI’s cunning plot to kill Test cricket within.... .....themselves are only 40 overs long (plus additional dancing time).' man...
i came in early to work today, so after finishing some of it... this article was a super welcome relief.
keep going andy.

Fantastic! One of your very best! You haven't lost the touch after such a lengthy layoff!
The references to the womb, baby crying, Summer Olympics etc were rip-roaring and absolutely hilarious!

However, I did feel that the section on England could've been funnier, since for most part it is serious talk and the humour seems to have been added as an afterthought and it does appear artificial.

Other than that, no complaints. The Kevin Pietersen 260-year deal was another good one.

Keep it up! Looking forward to more enjoyable posts! Thank you!

Maybe your mum got it very right! I'm sure the poor ICC must think so with all that patronising denigration. Sound observation about Rome though...what if they had organised Hitler's 3rd Reich? Maybe they should try for a 4 month World Cup-really set things alight.

Maybe your mum got it very right! I'm sure the poor ICC must think so with all that patronising denigration. Sound observation about Rome though...what if they had organised Hitler's 3rd Reich? Maybe they should try for a 4 month World Cup-really set things alight.

The 2011 World Cup format is more than slightly bemusing with the 30 "qualifying" matches being pointless as a broken pencil. If they wanted a knock-out of the best 8 teams, why not add one more round of knock-out and extend the tournament to 16 teams ?

P.S: It's great to know that I can soon hear you on a podcast in addition to The Bugle.

"Little did I know that these cries and screams would be so spectacularly misinterpreted as demands for sustenance or affection."
Andy Zaltzman, I love the way u interpret things.

Andy!...Terrific writing as always...Great to have you back!...You are awesome!...Still rolling on the floor!

Over the past few hours, I have read quite a lot of pieces from this blog, and I must say that I have not laughed as hard as this since I watched the last spongebob episode. Now I understand that this blog deals with far graver matters than a nickeledeon show, but to me at least, it is remarkable that a written piece can generate similar number of laughs. Great, humorous writing - Ponting playing in England colors and Ponting wandering around in the wilderness of Argentina will haunt me for months to come. Thanks for all these laughs Andy, I needed them, they are so hard to come by these days... I will be returning here often now, and I am sure that I won't be dissapointed.

Great article. If kp had half a mind for financial bargaining then he would have grabbed the deal with his switch hitting hands and be making cucumber sandwiches by the time of the first test.

A 260 year contract will the too less for KP as he always says he has to send his kids to school n he needs money for that..That guy is so poor..Give him atleast a 500 year contract

I loved your article. Your sense of humor is amazing.

I love your democratic system.
Another 7500 seats at Lord's will also result in a humungous amount of lost man hours in the queue for flat,warm Tetleys. Can the economy cope?

yipee!!! good times are here.. Confectionary Stall is back with a promise of more fun stuff to come..

Life is beautiful!!

How about a list of the top 10 english false dawns of the decade? Perhaps accompanied by a team of Englishmen who promised so much and delivered the opposite?

As an Israeli who understands almost nothing about Cricket, I find your writing very enjoyable...thank you

Andy is back with a bang after vacation.

"some archaeologists believe that the Roman Empire was in fact a cribbage tournament organised by the ICC that gradually spiralled out of control." ... Priceless!

I like your style!! More like Asterix style of writing with great relevance.

I like your style!! More like Asterix style of writing with great relevance.

well done england

'South Africa were vanquished again by their oldest, deadliest enemy − Duckworth-Lewis'....lol bcoz its tru

I like your style!! More like Asterix style of writing with great relevance.

Havent laughed like this in years. Thanks Andy. And by the by, looking at your photo here ,i took you to be 45 atleast. It was only after reading about your travails in "the summer of 1974" , i realized you were much younger. Go for a hair transplant man

It is always a great pleasure to read your article. Keep writing at least one article every fortnight.

ahh, we've missed you Andy. You're straight back in the saddle too, don't worry - form is temporary, class is permanent ;) Great to see you back, and looking forward to the podcast and more articles.

Will the radio show be on the beeb? will it be available to expats?

Very good. I totally agree about the BCCI - are they infact the biggest enemy of test cricket? It is great to see Sri Lanka actually playing outside their island. One day they will play a game that actually finishes with a result.

Also good to see (for the first time ever?) No South Africans, Australians or Englishmen in the top 5 Test batting rankings. Is that down to the featherbeds they are playing on?

Creative, incisive and utterly magnificent!

It was a hilariously composed freakish brilliance of a paraminiac aficionado.And you are that Mr. Andy.

Welcome back - this certainly brings a fresh (not to mention extremely funny) perspective on recent events from the cricketing world! How about a worst XI of the decade - based on (what else!) statistics, worst batting averages and bowling strike rates / averages?

Excellent post

One of the best ever andy articles....oh ma gosh ....excellent...seems like the forced absence from the cricket thoughts has done a world of good..keep it up andymm

I like it: so days will soon last only 40 overs plus dancing time. Presumably then, twenty20 matches will basically be One Day Internationals. Forcing the BCCI to come up with two2 matches. Teams will need only a couple of batsmen, one of which must, by law, be Chris Gayle.

Brilliant.....abosolutely BRILLIANT.....

How about giving us an uncapped XI for the decade - 11 players who have never (and likely will never) represent their countries at international level (so excluding good players who are in their early 20s and are likely to get a chance soon)?

Guess who Ian Botham is backing as England's new Freddie Flitoff-style all-rounder after yesterday's win over South Africa? www.nealcollins.co.uk/blog

It is really great news for all cricket fanatics that you start regular World Cricket Podcast for Cricinfo. I do hear your The Bugle podcast in Times Online which is so hilarious and wonderful. When ever you mention cricket in it i get so excited. You are a great ambassador for the game of Cricket. May be you should be made president of ICC(may be BCCI as it seems ICC is part of BCCI nowadays). Andy for President!!!! save Cricket from ICC and BCCI.

"BCCI’s cunning plot to kill Test cricket within the next ten years, enabling a 364-day-a-year Twenty20 tournament of such unremitting excitement"

"So, even at £50 per ticket, it will take over 1000 days of cricket to pay the money back."

10 years to get the new stadium build leaves them ideally placed to take advantage of 364 days/year of sell out cricket. The stadium would pay for itself in under 3 years!

And the timing of your return to the Confectionary Stall just after the announcement of the MCC's plans seems too much like coincidence. I don't think there is a radio series at all. Admit it, you've been spending the past few weeks advising the MCC haven't you!

It is criminal to make a yawning man laugh, Andy, one day I will get back at you..

Great to have you back Andy, i was getting worried about where you'd gone. Top stuff as always.

I'm sure you will agree Andy (what a hilarious name), just how little it takes to delight the half-witted. First the cream pie in the kisser, then the pants just falling down, oh stop it Mr. Zaltsman!

Just tuned in on the second test. 417 for two. Kill me now!

I don't understand the point of Test Cricket
without a World Test Champion, it is like eng
vs brazil only play friendlies and they never meet in the world cup because there isn't one.
Rankings are meaningless, if you want to be a champion beat Australia in Australia as Taylor and co. demonstrated in 1995 in the WI. So what of the rest of the Tests? Nothing matters but playing Oz in Oz and India in India? The crowds know this, the kids know this; yet the ICC blithely saunters on in ignorance. All they are bothered about are sponsors and TV revenue. The fact that Tests cannot sell out in SA, the Windies, India, Pakistan, NZ and Sri Lanka means nothing to them, so teams play three tests and 7 ODI's. And Eng and SA are playing 4 Tests, is that right? So that the teams could be tied 2-2?
Where is the logic? Only two countries can sell tickets, England and Australia, yet nobody panics. Test Cricket will be dead in 20 years.

I love the way that despite the fact that not a single aficianado of cricket had anything good to say about the format of the last two world cups, the ICC has chosen to universally ignore the advice and formulate a plan for another borefest. I really don't see much of an improvement on the format of the 1992 one where the fans saw everyone played each other once before a knockout stage.

Missed you man.

Hi Andy! You just mentioned some stuff about your kids. Prey to God that they don't turn to the football as is custom in your country. Not that the other team is doing any better than the Cricket team, but it's fashionable these days to be Football fan. I sincerely hope it doesn't become that way.

I can't wait to hear your podcast Andy. The last one (which seems like was decades ago) was great as was your Ashes show on the radio.

How about ten greatest (and worst) encounters of the last decade? Warne v. Cullinan as an example.

It is with people like you that there seems hope for the old blighty!

I love your writing Andy. I wonder if you could talk this good as well. If so, I am sure you would make a great commentator. I am bored listening to Russel Arnold and Laxman Sivaramakrishnan (as if the non-stop century parade wasn't boring already).

I read this comment of yours earlier in the week:

"It will make a pleasant change if England can buck their recent trend by following up a spectacular victory with something other than a spectacular defeat."

I'm currently staring at England's response to S.A's mammoth total. All I can say is how well you know England.

"of such unremitting excitement that the planet will inevitably start to spin faster and faster until days themselves are only 40 overs long (plus additional dancing time)"

Aaaaaaaaaahahahhah BRILLIANT!

Welcome back Andy! We missed you! (Well, strictly speaking we missed your irreverent prose. So I suppose that anybody who wrote as well as you did would be equally as popular with us as you are, but for now you're all we've got so keep up the good work!)

I feel sorry for you Andy, 95% of the respondents go "ooohh, ahhhh, brilliant, hilarious" and nobody talks about cricket, nobody has an original thought, can you imagine these blokes watching python or AbFab? Or Blackadder? I have a suggestion, just do straight cricket, your humour is lost on these guys anyway, and I say this as a fan. You do not have the audience. They watch bollywood for heaven's sakes. If I had a dollar for every time I read "Brilliant" you know the rest, save your humour for the first world, it is completely wasted here and I am saying that as a guy from Malaysia. Play it straight and don't waste your humour on people that don't know Moliere from Jerry Lewis or David Letterman.

I think SA will take the series 2-0 with two draws. I just hope there will be people watching and we don't have to listen to school children screaming. I think SA's batting is just more solid and after losing to Australia, Smith's guys will have a point to prove. By the way, Rudi Koertzen should never umpire a test again, and never be a third umpire after the nonsense at Dunedin.

Lol.
Love the article so much I've reread it three times.
I'd love to hear your take on irelands application for membership.

I am definitely bookmarking this page and sharing it with my friends.

:)

Think about this.
If you really did find a working formula that made you, say $1,000 a week online on average and it kept producing income no matter what, would you want to sell that idea to a bunch of noobs for $47 a pop and expect to retire on the proceeds? No way, man! It does not compute. It does not add up. And it does not make any sense to do that. I certainly don’t go shouting from the rooftops how I make my money online. Hell, I don’t want the competition taking a slice of my pie and neither would anyone who really does make good cash online.

www.onlineuniversalwork.com

I somehow dont agree with a few things, but its great anyways.

I was in a car once on a long trip (22hrs), when someone asked me what was I thinking about. I replied "cricket" (naturally). "But what about cricket?" they asked. "The game of cricket...you know, just thinking about it...". I am glad you can emphasise with me.