C is for Chittagong
The venue for the most flabbergasting performance of the year, bar none. The
only shame about Jason Gillespie's astonishing unbeaten Test double-century
against Bangladesh - on his 31st birthday to boot - is that his
world-beating mullet wasn't around to share the moment. It had already got
the chop, as Gillespie himself did immediately after the match. He has since
embarked on a successful second career as a pub-quiz question.
D is for Dad's Army
He may be England's unofficial cheerleader, but this was not one of Ian
Botham's cleverest jibes. "They are just a bunch of colonial geriatrics," he
told The News of the World. "I want to hear England saying how good
they are and how piss poor the Dad's Army of Aussies are." Whoops.
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E is for Effigies
The ultimate guide to what's hot and what's not. If your image wasn't
hoisted onto the shoulders of angry mobs, set alright, and paraded through
the streets of Lahore, Kolkata or Varanasi, then you simply weren't
newsworthy enough. Congratulations then to Darrell Hair, Greg Chappell and
Ricky Ponting, the mob's men of the year. And a special mention to Damien
"The Donkey" Martyn.
F is for Flintoff
AKA the Fallen. Poor old Freddie didn't have a good year. Ankle surgery,
poor form, an Ashes hammering to remove the gloss of 2005. Mumbai aside,
he discovered - like Ian Botham before him - that the England captaincy
isn't very conducive to allround heroics.
G is for Ghosts
... of captains past. Michael Vaughan has been hanging around Australia like
the spectre at the feast, Sourav Ganguly has been embarrassing his
obituarists in South Africa. Both England and India would benefit if their
former captains moved along quietly and let the next generation get on with
it, but that's not exactly in the nature of either man.
H is for Hair
The man who split the cricket world asunder with his pig-headed performance
at The Oval. Never mind the rights and wrongs of that infamous five-run
penalty or Pakistan's subsequent protest. It was the absurd inevitability of
the whole episode that still rankles. You could just sense that Hair, a man
with "previous" where subcontinental teams are concerned, was itching to
cause a scene ... and he amply succeeded.
I is for Inzamam-ul-Haq
A moderately eventful 12 months for Pakistan's man-mountain of a captain.
Comedy dismissals, forfeited Tests, diplomatic stand-offs, seven-match
suspensions. Like cricket's Forrest Gump, Inzy seemed to have been the
bewildered focus of every major event last year. Life wasn't quite a
box of chocolates for his team, though.
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J is for Johannesburg
A glorious freak of a performance, or a glimpse of the future of one-day
cricket? The pitch was pristine and the bowlers were cannon fodder, not
least Mick Lewis (10-0-113-0) who joined Gillespie in the pub-quiz stakes,
but the entertainment was unstinting. Australia made 434 ... and lost. By one
wicket. With one ball to spare. A disbelieving Bullring pinched themselves
with every six.
K is for KP
No absurd hairstyles. KP's weekly appearance in Heat
magazine had been secured by his celebrity engagement to Liberty X's Jessica
Taylor. His daily appearances on the back pages, meanwhile, were
secured by another series of colossal performances. But watch this space.
The rumour is that he's less loved by his team-mates than he is by himself.
When you see his kit go flying out of the dressing-room window at Sydney
this week, you'll know it's official.
L is for Lalit Modi
Rampant commercialisation was the story of India's year, and Modi was a
man who would build a block of flats on the site of the Lord's pavilion if
he thought the BCCI logo could be weaved into the architect's plans. Come
back Jagmohan Dalmiya, all is forgiven!
M is for Monty
The new darling of English cricket saw it all last year. He was lauded and lampooned, showered with accolades and snubbed by his own coach. The BBC Sports Personality crown just eluded his grasp, Beard of the Year did not, but amid all the triumphs and tribulations, the one thing that shone through was his devout professionalism. Never mind his 40 wickets in the year, his proudest achievement was his promotion to No. 10 in England's batting order.
N is for Nandrolone
Cricket always thought it was too grand to get involved in such grubby issues as steroid abuse, but then along came the incredible ego of Shoaib Akhtar to disabuse the naïve of such a notion. He and the less worldly-wise Mohammad Asif were busted for using the muscle-booster, Nandrolone, and banned for two years and a year respectively. But then, inevitably, they got
off on appeal, and a murky business got even murkier.
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O is for Ovalgate
The first Test forfeiture in cricket's 129-year history was a schemozzle from start to finish. The five-run penalty for alleged ball-tampering, the impromptu post-tea protest from the Pakistanis, the brief flirtation with a resumption, the refusal of Hair and Billy Doctrove to play ball, the
singular lack of information being imparted to the crowd. At 10.30pm, almost six hours and a thousand meetings later, England were awarded the most hollow victory of all time.
P is for Ponting
Or "Possessed", for that is what Australia's captain has been in his bid to right the wrongs of 2005. That summer, he was as tactically mobile as a Dalek facing Doctor Who; this winter, he's been as focussed as England have been flaccid - his furious 196 at the Gabba a case in point. And it's not just been the Ashes - his burning will scorched all opposition all year
long; 10 Tests, seven hundreds, nothing less than victory on each occasion.
R is for Retirements
Of which there were several, most of them high-profile and Australian.
R is also for Ramprakash, who finally demonstrated he can cut it on the big
stage by inheriting Darren Gough's crown in the BBC's celebrity
ballroom-dancing caper, "Strictly Come Dancing".
S is for Stress-related illness
The mystery ailment that has, in all probability, brought Marcus
Trescothick's international career to a sadly premature end. He left the
tour of India in February in tears, beneath an ECB smokescreen of incredible
impenetrability, and has not been the same since. The threat of "burn-out"
was voiced on numerous occasions in an over-loaded year, and
Trescothick, one of the game's hardest-working and most likeable characters,
became its most high-profile victim.
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T is for Terrorist
"The terrorist has got another wicket" was Dean Jones's heroically dim remark, shortly after Kumar Sangakkara had been caught by South Africa's bearded Muslim, Hashim Amla, during the second Test in Colombo. Jones was sacked by Ten Sports almost before the utterance had passed his lips, but within the month he was back, denying he'd ever erred. "Amla got the catch, Nicky Boje was the bowler," he wibbled. "I'll leave it up to you to work out who I was referring to." Nice one. Except it had been Pollock bowling at the time.
U is for Urn
After years of Aussie indignation that their Ashes urn was still
holed up in the museum at Lord's, the MCC finally arranged for a special
one-off trip Down Under. "Urn, Ashes Mr" arrived in Sydney on October 17,
having flown business class from London, strapped into its very own seat.
The tour could have been the ultimate insult, given that England were, for
once, the holders, but it ended up as the ultimate incentive for victory.
"It's clearly too fragile to fly home," said Ricky Ponting after sealing the
series in Perth.
V is for Vermeulen
A sad footnote in the wider decline of Zimbabwean cricket. When the
country's cricket academy was burned to the ground in October, the finger of
suspicion soon pointed at the troubled figure of Mark Vermeulen, a man who
earlier in the month had been found at the gates of Robert Mugabe's palace
in Harare, demanding to speak to the president, in spite of the fact that
people had been shot for less. In September 2005, he was banned from Lancashire
club cricket after a raging altercation with a member of the crowd, and a
subsequent on-pitch punch-up.
W is for Warne
Even the great man himself seemed pretty dumbfounded at the MCG last week.
"I don't know who's writing my scripts, but they are pretty good," he
remarked, after grabbing five first-innings wickets, including his landmark
700th, on the first day of his final Test in front of his adoring home
crowd. He went on to take seven in the match, as well as a valedictory 40
not out, to set up the prospect of a farewell Ashes whitewash. What a
performer.
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X is for crossing out a name on the team sheet
Which is what Graeme Smith was forced to do moments before the toss in November's third ODI against India at Cape Town. As he walked down the pavilion steps, he was met by Haroon Lorgat, the convenor of South Africa's selectors, who insisted that Andre Nel was not fit to play and that Andrew Hall should replace him. Smith vented his opinions in no uncertain terms,
before kneeling on an adjacent pitch and making the necessary adjustments. Minutes later, still steaming with indignation, he was dismissed second ball for a duck.
Y is for Mohammad Yousuf
In 2006, the man formerly known as Yousuf Youhana gave a new meaning to
conversion rate. He abandoned the underachieving wastefulness that had
defined the first seven years of his career, embraced Islam and all the
disciplines that are inherent in it, and clattered his way to a world-record
1788 runs in the year, including nine hundreds in 11 matches. Coincidence? I
don't suppose he thinks so.
Z is for Zombies
Those poor fools who turned their winters upside-down, hoping to watch
England retain the Ashes Down Under in a series so exhilarating that 2005
resembled a seven-match ODI series between USA and Zimbabwe. Like the team,
most fans had drifted out of contention before lunch on the first day at
the Gabba.
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