David Gower thinks that was taken cleanly © Getty Images

It is amazing there are not more off-field confrontations similar to that between the England captain, Michael Vaughan, and South Africa's AB de Villiers, Angus Fraser says in the Independent on Sunday, given the close proximity of the opposing dressing rooms at most venues. Fraser recollects one such rare flare-up.

There was an ugly incident in a one-day international I played in Barbados when Gladstone Small, one of the nicest men to play cricket for England, pointed to the dressing room when he dismissed Gordon Greenidge, the rather angry West Indian batsman. At the Kensington Oval the dressing rooms are divided by a narrow walkway, and at the end of the match an England player stuck his head in our room to inform us that an irate Greenidge had Small by the throat

Both Vaughan and de Villiers were at the centre of controversial catches, both of which were given not-out after being referred to the third umpire. In the Sunday Times, David Gower says he thought Vaughan's catch off Hashim Amla was clean, and feels perhaps the player's word should be taken.

My view was that Vaughan had caught it. Sky tried before play yesterday to demonstrate how the ball can look to be on the ground to the long lens when in fact it is safely in a fielder’s hands. The method of Vaughan’s catch, with a dive involved, left it open to suspicion that the ball might have just touched the grass. In our commentary box there was little agreement. I can sympathise with the third umpire and understand there was enough doubt for him to deny the catch.

So here is the key question: should we return to the days when players were trusted to say if a catch was good or should we be heading for greater use of TV pictures to help in the decision making? The answer has to be a bit of both, including selective use of the latter, which could be extended from its current scope to include a second look to check on whether a batsman has hit the ball for a catch or inside-edged it when the arms are up for an lbw appeal.

July 19, 2008

Forgotten brands alive in cricket

Posted on 07/19/2008 in Miscellaneous

	Jacques Kallis, in the more traditional vanilla by Hummel, cleans up an Ian Bell sporting the bright Mr Whippy white by Adidas © Getty Images

While England trot out at Headingley togged out in bright Mr Whippy white by Adidas, South Africa are in more traditional vanilla by Hummel, which is the subject of Rob Bagchi's article in the Guardian.

The latter, particularly, seems a strange marriage - the chevron merchants first gaining prominence with Alan Ball's white boots in the early 1970s and Denmark's "we are red, we are white, we are Danish dynamite" Euro 84 strip worn by Preben Elkjaer and Soren Lerby.

...

They are not the first half-forgotten brand to latch on to cricket in a bid for renewed prominence. Admiral, manufacturers of iconic kits for England and Leeds United in the 1970s thanks to their close ties to Don Revie as well as that infamous "chocolate" Coventry City away strip, recently finished an eight-year contract with England that put them back on the radar after two relatively moribund decades.

If cricket works wonders for retro brand chic, this trend will surely continue. Give it five years and Bangladesh will be decked out by Patrick, Sri Lanka by Bukta and New Zealand by Stylo Matchmaker. Old labels never die, they just change sports.

Unrepentant rebels

Posted on 07/19/2008 in Miscellaneous

	Protests during the rebel tour of South Africa © Cricinfo Ltd

Jim White in the Telegraph focuses on Out of the Wilderness, a three-part documentary in which Sky's Charles Colville retells the story of the South Africa's sporting isolation. White says:

What is somewhat dispiriting about Colville's investigations is how many of the rebels remain unrepentant. At least John Emburey admits he went solely for the money. Colin Croft, on the other hand, casts himself and his fellow rebel West Indian side as cricketing Rosa Parks, there to show racist South Africans that the black man could play cricket as well as the white and thus helping to accelerate the end of apartheid. Perhaps Croft should talk to Peter Oborne, the author of the definitive book about the D'Oliveira case, who tells Colville that the tourists "should never be allowed to forget they were giving comfort to a wicked, barbarous regime".

But it was Gatting who finally demonstrated how far a cricketer's moral compass can go awry. By 1990, when he led a tour to South Africa, no one could claim ignorance. The moment he signed up, Gatting was subject to unrelenting opprobrium. At a press conference, he was hectored by a journalist who wondered how he would spend his blood money ("fancy a yacht, Mr Gatting?"). Unlike even the West Indies team whose presence was greeted largely by sullen disappointment among black South Africans, Gatting arrived in Pietermaritzberg into an organised maelstrom of demonstration. Indeed, his very presence highlighted the growing absurdity of a dying regime: a month after his tour was abandoned in embarrassment, Nelson Mandela was released from prison and the swift gallop to normality was unleashed

July 17, 2008

Doping: the myths and reality

Posted on 07/17/2008 in Miscellaneous

There's plenty of confusion in India and Pakistan about the rules that govern anti-doping measures in the world of sport in the wake of the Mohammad Asif scandal. The Hindu lists out the various myths and realities of doping.

Myth: A Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) is the way to dope.

Reality: True, a TUE gives an athlete the chance to take a prohibited substance in certain medical conditions, but a TUE is granted by a panel of experts only after satisfying that such a medication is absolutely necessary for the athlete’s health and there is no substitute. For example, an athlete applying for a TUE for an asthma medication is expected to produce results of a series of tests and if the authorities are not satisfied the competitor may be subjected to on-the-spot tests to verify whether he actually suffers from asthma and the TUE he is carrying is in order.

July 14, 2008

Panesar's lawn at Lord's

Posted on 07/14/2008 in English cricket

	Monty Panesar hogs the attention at Lord's © Getty Images

Wimbledon has its Henman Hill and yesterday afternoon Lord's had its equivalent: Panesar Lawn, reports Richard Hobson in the Times. The MCC have installed a big screen on the Nursery Ground - the stretch of grass behind the Compton and Edrich Stands - and on a good-day for lazing around, one man stole the attention.

Panesar continues to grab the popular imagination but, as the game moved well beyond its halfway stage towards the climax of today, he started to resemble Henman on semi-finals day. He tried, tried again and then tried harder, but for all the optimistic whoops, balls narrowly missed the edge or fell short of fielders.

A delay between the real-time action and transmission on the screen created a double echo whenever Panesar bellowed one of his famous appeals. First would come Panesar's roar, then a chorus from the 25,000 or so watching live and another cheer from those following the big screen.

July 13, 2008

The negotiator

Posted on 07/13/2008 in Miscellaneous

Sean Morris, the new chief of the Professional Cricketers' Association, is trying to negotiate a share of the new spoils for the England team while preserving the soul of the game. He spoke to Martin Baker in the Independent.

As a journeyman county cricketer himself, who went on to various jobs in the leisure promotions world before joining the PCA, he certainly feels his members deserve a bit more money: "Players are central to delivering the future of the game. We have to work with the ECB and the BCCI [Board of Control for Cricket in India] in a world market nowadays. As the players' representatives, we must play a more effective role in securing financial rewards, but we've also got to for players coming into the game."

...

Meanwhile, although he welcomes the "massive opportunity" provided by the short form of the game, Morris is determined to preserve five-day test cricket, which he and 90 per cent of his members regard as the ultimate form of their sport. "We have a responsibility to protect the game we've got. Test matches in this country bring in £50m to £60m per annum. It would be stupid to kill off the skills required for test cricket [which aren't easily acquired in the limited-overs game]. That would be killing the golden goose."

'Exodus' draws Rhodes to Israel

Posted on 07/13/2008 in Miscellaneous

Now in Israel as part of a unique Israel team with several Jewish cricketers, Jonty Rhodes says he's excited by the talent in a country with no cricket culture. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, he says the book Exodus by Leon Uris really drew him to the country.

"My knowledge of Israel comes from the 'Exodus' and how tenacious and determined the people here are to have transformed the desert into this thriving economy. It's genius, and the people here are tenacious to be able to make a living in a really harsh environment."

Eden Gardens, India’s largest cricket stadium, is readying for a nip-and-tuck before the 2011 World Cup. But will it be any better? The Kolkata-based Telegraph investigates:

The tournament is two-and-a-half-years away but the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) that reigns, with the army’s boots on the throne, over Calcutta’s most famous patch of green has only a foggy idea of which apple to pluck for the Eden or which snake to let loose. Architects have not been spoken to, a budget is not in place. Prasun Mukherjee, the CAB president who took charge in a blaze of publicity around this time last year, said: “The land belongs to them (the army). We cannot start construction unless the lease is renewed.”

While that is true — the application for renewal has been lying with the defence ministry for over a year — Eden Gardens has already fallen behind the Wankhede stadium in the nip-and-tuck run. Wankhede has already submitted its plan to the Board of Control for Cricket in India, hired an architect and set its budget at Rs 100 crore.

July 10, 2008

How safe are helmets?

Posted on 07/10/2008 in Miscellaneous

The Telegraph's Simon Hughes writes about the Loughborough University's scientific study on helmets.

In a project financed in part by the government, in part by the ECB, Loughborough's sports technology institute - an organisation that works with sporting bodies and manufacturers to produce cutting edge equipment - has been subjecting various helmets and gloves to a severe assault. In a transparent box a typical betting helmet is positioned on the head of a mannequin which is screwed onto a steel post. Balls are fired at the helmet from close range using a bowling machine.

The speed is about 65mph, similar to that of James Anderson bouncer once it has reached the batsman. The process is recorded by cameras filming at 10,000 frames per second. Once slowed down the images are similar to those ads featuring crash-test dummies. A similar process is used to test a glove on the hand of a prosthetic arm.

July 3, 2008

The reading habit

Posted on 07/03/2008 in Miscellaneous

Just how important is education in a sportsman's career? Brian Moore writes in the Telegraph, writes that better educated athletes are easier to coach, understand quicker and have a longer attention span. They make better team players and leaders. He gives the example of the controversial run-out of Grant Elliott at the Oval, when several England players failed to think sensibly and alert Paul Collingwood to reconsider his decision to continue appealing. Education teaches you to think independently, but unfortunately it wasn't evident that day.

One of the reasons why the Australian Institute of Sport has been phenomenally successful is that it insists on its athletes studying properly alongside their training regimes. They have no difficulty ensuring athletes study because it is a captive market; all the athlete wants to do is play sport and they are prepared to do whatever is required of them; including reading books.

In the Times, Stuart Broad says he loves Test cricket, despite his friends telling him all the time that it's boring. He also talks about his formative years and relationship with his parents.

“To be fair, my mum's been the one who watched most of my cricket when I was younger. She is the one who carted me around the country. She'd be sat there in a deckchair all day watching and then drive me home. So she's the one who has always watched my development.”

June 20, 2008

ICC's new lunch rule

Posted on 06/20/2008 in Miscellaneous

Paul Holden, the Sideline Slogger, comes up with 10 topical questions on cricket, including ICC's new lunch rule following the abandoned match between England and New Zealand at Edgbaston. He provides answers as well:

Will the new lunch rule make a difference?

Under the new rules, even if Collingwood had played hardball and disagreed with Vettori over the need for another helping of Edgbaston macaroni cheese for his boys, the match referee would have been wheeled in to make a call.

Who was the original switch hitter?
One of the most boring batsmen alive in fact: no, not Geoff Allott, Shoaib Mohammed, Alastair Cook, Rahul Dravid, Trevor Franklin, Chris Tavare or Mike Brearley - none other than Jacques Kallis, who hit two unorthodox sixes in a match for Middlesex at Uxbridge during his stint as their overseas player in the nineties.

June 17, 2008

Don't discourage innovation

Posted on 06/17/2008 in Miscellaneous

	Kevin Pietersen's stroke of genius © Getty Images

It is a sign of genius that a player can make the laws of a game look foolish while not obviously cheating, says Michael Atherton in the Times on Kevin Pietersen's switch-hitting. He offers a solution to the conundrum that the lawmakers face.

So what can MCC do to not discourage such wondrous feats as Pietersen's on Sunday, but at the same time maintain the integrity of the game and intrinsic fairness to bowlers? Well, it could consider the following: that a fielding side should not be penalised once the batsman decides to switch-hit. That is to say, once a right-handed batsman has changed both grip and stance to become in effect a left-hander, the bowler ought to be allowed to bowl both sides of the wicket, without incurring a wide, and, taking that one stage further, he ought to be allowed to get leg-befores by pitching both sides of the wicket as well. At a stroke, the kind of genius we saw on Sunday would not be prevented, but would be discouraged by the subsequent advantage accruing to the bowler.

Blogging on the Guardian website, Richard Williams feels Twenty20 is the perfect stage for switch-hits.

My solution would be to take full advantage of the emergence of Twenty20 cricket, a form of cricket for which Pietersen himself has expressed an almost excessive enthusiasm. For Twenty20 only, improvised switch-hitting would be permitted. A batsman would be given out leg-before if, in the umpire's opinion, the ball would have hit the stumps, no matter where it pitched. A wide would be given for any ball pitching outside lines of longitude drawn six inches from the stumps on both sides of the wicket. And the fielding problem would be solved by making captains set symmetrically proportioned fields, with four men positioned on each side of the wicket and one "floater" to be deployed ad libitum. Oh, go on, try it.

Read what Michael Holding and Richard Hadlee think about it in the Telegraph. Also, don't forget to read the views of Cricinfo's panel of experts.

June 8, 2008

Questions galore on the Champions League

Posted on 06/08/2008 in Miscellaneous

Will players ditch their counties in favour of the big bucks of cricket's Champions League? Jonathan Agnew in BBC Sport says plenty such questions need answering in cricket's latest mega event.

What about England's one-day cricketers who are unavailable for almost all of the domestic Twenty20 which starts on Wednesday? They will probably be free for the Champions League and I suspect will be keen to get their hands on the prize money.Will Peter Moores release them and, if so, what effect will that have on team spirit within their county team?

In the Sunday Telegraph, Scyld Berry wonders whether county supporters will buy into the aspirations of their team and turn out in large numbers, now with $5 million up for grabs for the world Twenty20 champions.

The sum of prize-money for the Champions League far exceeds the $2million touted when the idea was first proposed. The lid of Pandora's Box has been opened; the expectations of domestic cricketers have been raised as never before; attitudes will change as the object of the exercise is now major money. It may prove to be something of an understatement when Clarke said: "The ECB Twenty20 Cup will be even more fiercely contested this season in the knowledge that the two teams who reach the final will qualify for the Champions League and the chance to win $5 million."

May 26, 2008

Cricket and 9/11

Posted on 05/26/2008 in Miscellaneous

An Irish-born author, Joseph O'Neill, has written a novel set in New York City post 9/11 and the central theme which binds the novel is cricket. Titled Netherland - the name a pun on the main character's Dutch nationality - the book has been described as the 'wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we've yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Centre fell'. The book was inspired by an encounter with a Pakistani seeking to build a cricket stadium in New York, 9/11 itself and O'Neill's own involvement in playing cricket in the city.

'When I told publishers that I was writing a novel about cricket in New York people just shook their heads and walked away. There was not so much a bidding war for it as a bidding peace. Only one publisher was interested.'

Read on in the Observer

May 24, 2008

All you need isn't love, it's cricket

Posted on 05/24/2008 in Miscellaneous

Canada’s Globe and Mail looks at how cricket is catching on in Toronto. It also quotes Cricket Canada’s chief executive, Atul Ahuja, who plays in the Markham league:

“People are very bullish about the appeal of the sport. It's going to catch on in Canada. The beauty of the game is it's such a great way to bring people together. Lennon said, ‘All you need is love.' I say, all you need is cricket.”

May 12, 2008

Do or die for Afghanistan

Posted on 05/12/2008 in Miscellaneous

The Australian’s Tim Albone looks at cricket in Afghanistan and finds their coach, Taj Majik Alam, desperate for his side to qualify for the 2011 World Cup and with bigger things to worry about than rain delays:

Alam has been threatened by a suicide bomber for not picking a particular player, one of the star bowlers has been shot in the chest and his training facilities amount to four nets.

The piece also contains a link to Albone’s video documentary of the team’s bid to make it to their first World Cup.

May 9, 2008

Crowe and the art of captaincy

Posted on 05/09/2008 in Miscellaneous

	"If you make decisions, then the game will move forward at the right pace and you’ll be on track" © Getty Images

Martin Crowe, the former New Zealand captain, was a fine batsman in his time but also proved a shrewd leader, most notably for tossing offspinner Dipak Patel the new ball during the 1992 World Cup and for telling Mark Greatbatch to belt the cover off the ball.

Speaking to Kolkata's The Telegraph, the 45-year-old Crowe says that captaincy requires one to articulate thoughts and ideas and handle people well. Interestingly, he also ranks the current Test captains and reveals that he learnt from Ian Chappell and Mike Brearley’s The Art of Captaincy. And that Stephen Fleming was the captain who impressed him most.

The Indian selectors, in particular, have made a smart move by appointing Dhoni as the one-day captain… This will allow him to grow into the full job step by step… Dhoni has charisma and has a manner… He’s learning from the Sachin Tendulkars… New Zealand Cricket should’ve done the same thing as India instead of rushing and giving Vettori everything all too soon. Fleming could’ve been the Test captain for a couple of years more. Definitely one year, if not a couple… England have Paul Collingwood in the ODIs… He’s a fighting cricketer, yes, but is tactically inept… Tactically, I haven’t seen a worse captain but he’ll try and make up for that by fighting performances.

May 6, 2008

Bat makers enter carbon trading

Posted on 05/06/2008 in Miscellaneous

The MCC is in the news as it contemplates changing the laws relating to the make-up of bats. In the Australian Peter Lalor looks at the recommendations to limit the amount of carbon in a handle.

The law will state it must feature 90% cane, rubber and glue. However, Gray-Nicolls is already one step ahead and has developed a bat which replaces the rubber with 10% carbon. The company said it believed the handle for the Fusion II was within the proposed new law.

Read Cricinfo’s story on the changes here.

April 12, 2008

Cricket raids New York schools

Posted on 04/12/2008 in Miscellaneous

New York has become the first school district in the US to introduce cricket as a sport in public high schools. Most of the players in the New York City cricket league are from the West Indies, India or Pakistan, and the response has been better than expected. Read on in the New Zealand Herald.

Angus Armstrong, born and raised in the United States, has been playing cricket for around three years at Stuyvesant High School, before the league was introduced. He said the experience allows him to gain an insight into cultures of other nations where the sport is popular. "There's an entire international community out there that so many Americans don't know about," he said.

April 10, 2008

Successful Test cricketers live for longer

Posted on 04/10/2008 in English cricket

Proof that some people have too much time on their hands. Professor Paul Boyle, from the University of St Andrews in Fife, has delved into the lifespans of England's Test cricketers and found that those who have played more than 25 Tests have a life expectancy of 80 years while those who have played fewer than 25 live on average to be 73.

In the Daily Telegraph, he writes that:

“One suggestion is that they benefited from the kudos they earned and this stayed with them for the rest of their lives, meaning they were less likely to be stressed and suffer ill-health."

In a far-from shattering conclusion, he adds that captains live no longer than non captains.

April 4, 2008

Start spreading the news. They're playing cricket in New York

Posted on 04/04/2008 in Miscellaneous

Fewer than 1000 people play cricket in the Big Apple even though it hosted the national championships in 2006, reports Timothy Williams in the New York Times. However, the game has been introduced as a school sport and about 600 students are joining in. Despite the interest, Williams says nobody is expecting it to overtake baseball, football or soccer.

“In my travels around the city, it became clear that in the major parks around the city a lot of people were playing cricket on weekends,” the Department of Education’s Eric Goldstein said. “The old baseball field I used to play on in Cunningham Park in Queens is now a cricket pitch. It’s amazing to see.”

Parks on the edges of the city — Van Cortlandt, Soundview and Ferry Point in the Bronx; Canarsie Beach in Brooklyn; and Baisley Pond in Queens — are filled with cricket players on summer weekends, their crisp white uniforms presenting a vivid contrast on the grass fields. Some 650 adults play in the city’s six leagues.

And no story about cricket in the United States is complete without a description of the game.

It is similar to baseball, but with differences that can make it difficult for Americans to follow. Players run with their bats in hand; balls are bowled, not pitched; spit balls are allowed; fielders are not permitted to wear gloves; there is no foul territory; and bowlers (pitchers) sprint before releasing the ball, which typically bounces and picks up spin before reaching a batsman.

Don't forget to check out Cricinfo's Beyond the Test World blog, featuring news and updates from the lesser-known reaches of the cricketing world

March 28, 2008

It's no flipper, but Warne's poker face is hard to read

Posted on 03/28/2008 in Miscellaneous

	Deal or no deal: Is Shane Warne bluffing? © Getty Images

Shane Warne has put his cards on the table and will play professional poker instead of county cricket. Joe Hachem, a world champion at the tables, says in the Daily Telegraph Warne is pretty good at his new pursuit and his face is hard to read.

"Shane has that competitive nature and that's what makes him a champion," Hachem said. "He brings that competitiveness to the poker table. I said to him in the early days that he had what it takes to be a professional.

"He's also got the poker face now. When he first started out I told him he was giving off too much facial expression. But now he is very hard to read."

March 21, 2008

Cricket needs saving from itself

Posted on 03/21/2008 in Miscellaneous

Even by the game's customary standards, it has been a traumatic week, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald. Three senior West Indian players putting lucrative club cricket in India before the national team, doomed attempts to suppress the unofficial ICL, a KPMG report into Zimbabwe, the return of Darrell Hair, Charl Langeveldt's pulling out of South Africa's tour of India.

Clearly they [Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shiv Chanderpaul] represent the worst of West Indian cricket, the greed, vanity and vapidity that has ruined a great tradition. Sack the lot and find some youngsters eager to serve. West indies cricket can hardly get any worse. Already the team belongs on the second rank. Money does not talk, it swears.

March 19, 2008

The worst IPL team name

Posted on 03/19/2008 in Miscellaneous

Paul Holden asks if the Mumbai Indians is the worst IPL team name, whether John Bracewell is on drugs, whether India are taking over the world game and more in his blog Sideline Slogger:

Sri Lanka this week adopted Canada from a cricket development perspective - perhaps NZC could send the Indian board our CV and get us in consideration to become their foster child.

February 29, 2008

Leap Day memories

Posted on 02/29/2008 in Miscellaneous

There aren't too many cricketing memories to list under February 29, Leap Day. But for Kenya and (West Indies) it's a day they won't forget any time soon. Mid-Day's sports editor Clayton Murzello remembers when he was assigned to cover the World Cup game 12 years ago.

In the press box, the Kenyans were willed on by a new set of fans — greenhorns and veteran scribes. At the pavilion end, a group of Kenyan students joined the build-up to one of cricket’s biggest upsets. The organisers had thrown open the gates for the second half of the match.

Odumbe led the charge and sent back Chanderpaul, Adams and Roger Harper. Rajab had not finished for the day. Cuffy became his third victim, the last wicket to fall.

Suddenly, the atmosphere was electric. The Kenyans leapt, ran and yelled in ecstasy. If India beating the West Indies in the 1983 World Cup final was a shocker, this was another one which proved sport has little respect for reputation.

Murzello also interviews Leap Day-born Australian cricketer Gavin Stevens.

February 27, 2008

Dale's Bangla trip

Posted on 02/27/2008 in Miscellaneous

Dale Steyn talks of his form over the last year, of Morne Morkel's Twenty20 World Cup performance and his plans to go fishing in Chittagong in this interview with the Dhaka-based Daily Star.

There are always other guys coming through, other bowlers like Morne Morkel who basically does the same thing as me … bowls fast. You can never think that your spot is guaranteed. It's good to have pressure from underneath, knowing that there is someone who can take your place.

February 18, 2008

Could Mozart have been a Bradman?

Posted on 02/18/2008 in Miscellaneous

Maths and music have long been linked, but composers seem to have a talent for cricket, writes David McKie in the Guardian. He investigates:

There may be examples lurking in the Wisden Book of Cricketers' Lives, but this has more than 8,000 entries and the only one I've discovered so far is a man called Chadwyck-Healey, "quite well known as a composer of church music". Unfortunately he doesn't seem to have been much of a cricketer: "his enthusiasm greatly exceeded his skill".

The outstanding crossover case in this book is probably Neville Cardus, who within living memory wrote magnificently for the Guardian about both cricket and music. In later years, music seemed the more powerful passion. I can still remember those moments when his handwritten notices would arrive in the features department, brought in by his chauffeur. "From Neville Cardus, Festival Hall", they would say at the top, and at the foot : "please do not cut". One night the concert was cancelled, and his piece of paper proved to be blank; except that it said at the top: "From Neville Cardus, Festival Hall"; and at the bottom, as ever, "Please do not cut".

February 4, 2008

Eccentrics on ice

Posted on 02/04/2008 in Miscellaneous

	© Getty Images

While European cricket, outside some die-hards in the southern regions, is in its winter hibernation, The Times reports that there is one festival celebrating. For in St Moritz it is the 20th anniversary of Cricket On Ice.

The British are credited with bringing most of the sport and tourism to St Moritz and, inadvertently, one distinguished Brit is responsible for the dottiest activity of all.

In 1988, David Gower - soon to be made England captain for a second time - played here in an inaugural game on the lake. It was a marketing ploy, a picture opportunity, but Gower characteristically provided more publicity than planned by sinking his car on a thin patch of ice. They talk about it to this day.

Soon after Gower’s car sank into the murky depths, Daniel Haering rounded up enough British friends to get a team together for another cricket match against his former school. It was the start of an eccentric institution.

February 1, 2008

Alan Knott the greatest wicketkeeper-batsman

Posted on 02/01/2008 in Miscellaneous

	'A faultless team man: loyal, modest, chivalrous' ©The Cricketer International

On the heels of Adam Gilchrist's retirement from Test cricket, and on the day he prepares for his final Twenty20 international, the Telegraph's Michael Henderson opines that there was a greater wicketkeeper-batsman - Alan Philip Eric Knott. Henderson says that in the last 15 years, Australia have been able to call on three cricketers who have changed the way in which Test cricket is played - Gilchrist, Michael Slater and Shane Warne - but still feels for talent with the gloves, reliability with the bat, and loyaty, Knott's the man.

The greatest wicketkeeper-batsman was, and remains, Alan Knott. Most things can be argued either way, but this is one thing that can't. Raymond Illingworth, the captain when England regained the Ashes in Australia in 1970-71, said of Knott's work that it was simply not possible to keep wicket better than he did on that tour.

December 11, 2007

Olympic cricket in 2020?

Posted on 12/11/2007 in Miscellaneous

Cricket took a step forward to being included in the Olympics yesterday when it was officially recognised by the International Olympic Committee, Adelaide Now reports.

The earliest cricket could be seen at the Games is 2020.

As it will not have spent the mandatory two-year provisional status by the time the 2008 Beijing Olympics are over, its case will be reviewed following the 2012 London Games.

The Olympic program is determined seven years ahead of every Games.

"Both (sports) showed a lot of activity and work with youth," IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies told reporters after the first day of an executive board meeting.

Other fully recognised sports include rugby, golf, squash, bridge and tug-of-war. Provisionally recognised sports include sumo wrestling.

November 23, 2007

Test cricket can never be upstaged

Posted on 11/23/2007 in Miscellaneous

With the arrival of Twenty20 and several obits being written on the 50-over game, Harsha Bhogle feels that Test cricket will remain in robust health. The stands may not be full but people know the scores, great performances are lauded, victories are celebrated and statistics greedily devoured.

To my mind, the reason Test cricket will never die is because it gives people the opportunity of fighting back. A mistake is not the end of the world, players stand firm against the tide and sometimes turn it back with old-fashioned grit. Test cricket is not retro, it is still contemporary and even modern cricketers look forward to playing it.

In the same piece in the Indian Express, he suggests that 50-overs cricket can follow the rules of Tests by splitting the innings into two overs of 25 overs each to add more spark to a dying format.

Swinging it in Havana

Posted on 11/23/2007 in Miscellaneous

	Kieron Pollard, wielding a baseball bat, was a smashing success in Havana © Trinidad & Tobago Express

Mike Haysman, in his column in SuperCricket writes about his visit to Havana for his television show and the baseball exploits of Kieron Pollard, the new Trinidad and Tobago sensation. Pollard, holding a baseball bat for the first time, faced up to Pedro Medina [he is also referred to as Lazo], who was a member of the Cuban national team for 19 years.

Keiron was looking as though he was taking this all in his stride as his typical West Indian gait took him to the batting box. Five minutes later he had not laid bat on ball. He had swung from the hip at every thunderbolt that thudded into Lazo’s catchers’ glove. It was close but no cigar. A smile was slowly appearing on Pedro’s face. Keiron’s eyes grew wider with each delivered strike.

The speed generated by Lazo was quite remarkable. It must have been intimidating from Keiron’s perspective as well, knowing that his pin point accuracy could intentionally be slightly and dangerously adjusted at any chosen moment. Still Pollard swung but still no connection. I could see in Lazo’s eyes that he was enjoying this currently one sided challenge.

And then it started to happen. Pollard found his range. The odd fly ball and foul signalled that the wheel was starting to turn. Before long Keiron was making solid connection and the by now swelled gallery was muttering Spanish words of appreciation. The odd nods of approval were delivered my way by Pedro and Lazo also complimented Pollard.

November 21, 2007

Sangakkara receives plaudits

Posted on 11/21/2007 in Miscellaneous

	Kumar Sangakkara was at his sublime best at the Bellerive Oval © Getty Images

Kumar Sangakkara's, who scored 192 in the second Test against Australia in Hobart, has received rave reviews, not only for the manner in which it was scored his runs, but the way he took umpire Rudi Koertzen's decision to rule him out when replays showed that the ball had missed his bat and come off his shoulder.

Peter Roebuck, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, felt Sangakkara's dismissal could not "erase the memory of the wonderful innings".

Sangakkara was superb. While Sanath Jayasuriya was contentedly clubbing the ball around the ground, he was able to advance at his own pace. In the early hours of his resistance he played a stream of sweetly timed strokes, placements through cover, glides off his pads and assaults on misdirected spinners. When necessary he defended alertly, eye on the ball, biding his time.

The Australian's Michael Davis lauded Sangakkara's sportsmanship.

Kumar Sangakkara proved himself a true champion by shaking hands with South African Rudi Koertzen after the game despite a woeful decision by the umpire that cost the Sri Lankan the chance of making a historic double-century.

.

Glenn Mitchell, in his ABC Grandstand Blog, also praises Sangakkara.

Too many times the sporting headlines are filled with elite sportspeople's misdemeanors.

It seems it's more palatable to expose the flaws rather than highlight the grace.

Today at Bellerive Oval, Sri Lanka's Kumar Sangakkara embodied what we want to see from our sports champions, and he deserves to be heralded for his batting brilliance and his extreme grace.

November 13, 2007

Pressure grows on Cricket Australia

Posted on 11/13/2007 in Australian cricket

	Sri Lanka's Sunday Times makes its point

As the row over Cricket Australia’s demands to charge agencies for access to international matches grows, the pressure on the board escalates, although it has, perhaps unsurprisingly, found an ally in the Indian board, an organization which is not averse to grabbing income from anywhere it can.

In Sri Lanka there is widespread anxiety that the public might miss out on a landmark when and if Muttiah Muralitharan breaks Shane Warne’s record of Test wickets. The Sri Lankan board has written to CA and Sri Lanka’s Sunday Times published a silhouette figure with its cricket coverage with a caption: "This space is dedicated to what would have been an action picture of the Test match in progress in Brisbane. The black figure is courtesy of Cricket Australia."

The subject has attracted comment across the globe. In the Gulf News, Gautam Bhattacharyya wrote:

Cricket Australia, one of the most progressive and professional bodies to run the sport, is now being termed as 'greedy.' It's very much a subject of debate, but what is certain is that they have set a rather dangerous precedent now.

In Jamaica’s Gleaner, Tony Becca points out that sports needs the media.

Cricket at all levels has been surviving because of sponsors, for sponsors' presence is key. And if the media, if the newspapers are not present, neither will the sponsor's product or service. Sport has become big business, but it has become big business partly because of the exposure and the coverage it receives from the media - and none more so than cricket.

Greg Baum makes a similar point in The Age:

This, though, is not about marketing. Mostly, cricket shares a mutually convenient relationship with media; cricket sells papers, papers sell cricket. It is true of other sports and other media

The Times of India's Partha Bhaduri takes off on the Indian board's stance.

There’s no denying the fact that such demands could spill over into written content as well, apart from changing the way the Internet functions and is regulated.

October 24, 2007

A history of radio commentary

Posted on 10/24/2007 in Miscellaneous

Narottam Puri, writing in his column in cricketnext.com, provides a historical overview of the evolution of cricket commentary on radio, and on the subsequent decline of the same.

History tells us that Test cricket began in Australia in the late 19th century when Australia played England. Few know that it was also in Australia that radio commentary originated.

This occurred in 1922 in a Testimonial match for Charles Bannerman [Test cricket’s first centurion] at the Sydney Cricket Ground, the first commentator being a gentleman named Lionell Watt. BBC introduced sport commentary in its repertoire only in 1927 when Teddy Wakelam did the commentary of an England Vs. Wales Rugby match. Wakelam was soon to be drafted to do first Football, and then Tennis at Wimbledon.

The same year, i.e. 1927, the first cricket commentary was broadcast on BBC in the Essex Vs. New Zealand match at Leyton. Plum Warner, ex England player became the first to do cricket commentary. He wasn’t a success and was replaced by F.H.Gillingham who as John Arlott wrote "had the ill luck to be announced for his first quarter hour when rain prevented start of play. He struggled on to fill his time out of nothing, proceeded to read out the advertisements on the hoarding."

October 15, 2007

Travelling through the streets of Pakistan

Posted on 10/15/2007 in Miscellaneous

Neil Manthorp, writing in Super Cricket, provides a fascinating account of the sights and sounds of Pakistan, along with a description of his meeting with a salesman in Lahore.

The only specific shopping commission I had was for pashmina shawls, a speciality of the region. Made from cashmere, silk or wool - or a combination of two, or even all three - it was an impossible task [for me, anyway] to work out which were 'the real thing.'

Having attempted to bargain with stall holder Ashraf and his seven-year-old nephew, Ephraim, it soon became apparent that it was not a fair contest.

Ephraim was there because he knew more English than his fiercely bearded uncle but it made little difference.

Ashraf knew immediately that I was his for the taking. Having secured three shawls [all of which felt as soft as cashmere to me] for the princely sum of Rs. 110, Ashraf looked a little crestfallen - and revealed his knowledge of English wasn't as sparse as he made out. "You only tourist today, nobody come here now. Business no good."

And with that he handed me another shawl with the words: "Take and give your friends, you tell that is good place here...Smith must come to see."

September 10, 2007

Cricket at Microsoft without the googlys

Posted on 09/10/2007 in Miscellaneous

Microsoft, the American multinational computer corporation, has backed cricket to woo Indian employees as this Reuters piece, carried in the Sydney Morning Herald, highlights. Competing against fast-growing technology companies in India offering jobs with handsome pay raises and quick promotions, Microsoft has to work harder these days to attract and retain the best and brightest Indian engineering talent. And one inititative has been Microsoft's cricket program - comprising four teams that compete against other local teams - that is seen as a valuable tool in keeping the company's largest minority group happy.

September 6, 2007

Wanted: new superheroes to rank with ageing best

Posted on 09/06/2007 in Miscellaneous

Andy Zaltzman, writing in the Times bemoans the lack of young superstars to fill the void left by the ageing giants who are nearing retirement.

A generation of record-breaking, game-changing greats is gradually taking its leave of the sport, leaving in its wake a potential superstar drought that could threaten the very existence of multimillion-pound television deals.

According to the LG ICC rankings, of the world’s top 15 Test batsmen, only Kevin Pietersen is under 29. On the same day ten years ago, only Steve Waugh of the top eight batsmen was over 29. Eight of the present top ten bowlers are in their thirties. In September 1997, seven of the top ten were under 30. And of the top ten ranked batsmen and bowlers in one-day international cricket, only Lasith Malinga, the Sri Lanka pace bowler, is under 25.

September 4, 2007

Method should suit the madness

Posted on 09/04/2007 in Miscellaneous

Is the Duckworth-Lewis method as complicated as it seems? No, says Frank Duckworth, one half of the old firm. GS Vivek of the Indian Express caught up with him and Duckworth goes on to reveal that the method of calculation is likely to change to suit the trends of the modern game.

Frank and Tony are great friends who live 60 miles from each other; occasionally they travel halfway to a pub to share a pint of beer and talk. It’s not casual conversations; it’s calculative to the core and serious.

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan too caught up with Duckworth for an informal chat in Bristol over a week ago.

August 13, 2007

Lara's neice grabbed

Posted on 08/13/2007 in Miscellaneous

Brian Lara's niece was abducted during a gunpoint car-jacking and police believe when the robbers found out who she was they tried to get a ransom.

Police found Adanna Lara, 21, gagged and locked in a room with her hands tied behind her back .

Read more in the Trinidad Express.

August 1, 2007

The Npower girls. Discuss

Posted on 08/01/2007 in Miscellaneous

	Npowering or ... not? © Cricinfo

Ah, the Npower girls. You’ve got to love them, don’t you?

Tanya Aldred in The Guardian muses over their continuing appeal, but questions if the concept is not just a little outdated:

It just all seems a little bit 1970s, not such a long way from being draped over a car bonnet, promising the spotty youth in accounts the drive of his life.

The Npowered-up piece referred to in the article is here.

July 17, 2007

Communication crisis

Posted on 07/17/2007 in Miscellaneous

Christopher Martin-Jenkins believes that a modern tendency has been responsible for demeaning the game’s fundamental spirit. At Lord's on Monday (July 16) he delivered the Cowdrey Lecture, and The Times featured extracts of what he had to say.

Cricinfo recorded 29 million page views from 7.5 million visits to county cricket alone in 2006 - and has already had 19 million this season so, despite the rain, they expect the figure to be exceeded. Obviously because a great many people want to find out the latest scores. Sadly, if they are on the move in their cars they can listen for them in vain; and when they are given it often seems to be as a breathless afterthought following the big story that Scunthorpe's millionaire chairman has denied rumours that their controversial manager Bruno Boscovic is going to be sacked. Or, more to the point, some utterly mundane comment by Jose Murinho such as he thinks that Chelsea have the players to win the Premiership. What a surprise. The media has been conned to a dangerous extent – if you value the variety of life - into becoming a sort of spin machine for the all-pervading, all-powerful Premiership.

July 12, 2007

Where have all the fast bowlers gone?

Posted on 07/12/2007 in Miscellaneous

	Brett Lee: Member of an increasingly rare species © Getty Images

"Whatever the aesthetics of watching spin bowling, I maintain that for the pure adrenalin of cricket-watching there is no finer sight than that of a thoroughbred fast bowler on song, hurling himself into the fray against batsmen of the highest technical and mental calibre," says Mike Selvey in The Guardian.

Where are the genuine pace aces? There is Lee certainly, Harmison when he can be roused and Shane Bond when fit. The three slingers - Edwards, Shaun Tait and Lasith Malinga - are rapid, but that is about it really, isn't it? Some would argue that the volume of cricket conspires against those who want to bowl on the very edge of physical exertion, but I don't buy that: if you can bowl fast, you do. Nor does the state of pitches around the world offer a clue, for the dullest surfaces of them all produced Imran Khan and, together, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, the most prolific pace bowling combination the game has seen.

June 14, 2007

Narcissism or simply fun?

Posted on 06/14/2007 in English cricket

Michael Henderson, writing in The Daily Telegraph, has slammed spectators at Old Trafford for their behaviour during the recent Test.

“Good as it was to see the ground full last weekend, too many people had come to admire themselves. This is not a problem exclusive to Old Trafford. The narcissism encouraged by television, which likes to identify 'colourful characters', and people 'having fun', is evident everywhere. It just seems more apparent in Manchester, where the heavy-handed stewarding continues to offend regular patrons.

“What can be done about the increasingly unpleasant atmosphere inside Test grounds? Not much, I'm afraid. Where once spectators were sober observers (in both senses of the word), immersed in the game's history, we now have thousands of people for whom a Test match offers a splendid opportunity to get riotously drunk, and possibly the chance to disrobe and charge on to the field of play.”

Henderson, who has a track record of taking swipes at Old Trafford, writes that when Shiv Chanderpaul completed his half century “thousands of revellers ignored his achievement, preferring to hurl their beer trays higher and higher. The only ground where these high jinks do not take place is Lord's, where MCC members are often mocked for being snobs. Anybody who was at Manchester last week would say that snobbery has much to commend it.”

April 25, 2007

Cricket dictionary for mobiles

Posted on 04/25/2007 in Miscellaneous

I think we can assume that the vast majority of Cricinfo's readers have a degree of knowledge about the game (and, in some cases, an actual degree). But your friends might not, so why not buy them a cricket dictionary for their mobile phone?

April 13, 2007

Sachin and Lara: the tragic twilight

Posted on 04/13/2007 in Miscellaneous

The Hindu's Nirmal Shekar looks at the fading careers of modern era cricket's two biggest batting superstars, Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar, and asks the question: merely because we believe that sporting icons should say goodbye in their pomp, is it fair to nudge Tendulkar and Lara off the stage?

Read on to see if you agree or disagree.

March 30, 2007

Cover-up a viewer turn-off

Posted on 03/30/2007 in Miscellaneous

Batsmen may be happier and safer wearing helmets, but, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, they prevent fans seeing the batsmen's faces, which, market research has found, makes it hard for them to relate to the players.

But, as Philip Derriman notes, it’s not all gloom.

If they're bad for TV, they're about the only thing in cricket that is. In other respects, cricket is a broadcaster's dream. It lasts all day; the main action is concentrated in a smallish area; it's essentially a one-on-one (bowler-against-batsman) contest; the game lends itself to endless analysis by commentators; and the short breaks between overs are ideal for slotting in commercials.

March 26, 2007

China outplays Taiwan

Posted on 03/26/2007 in Offbeat

The USA’s ABC News reports how China has used the World Cup to score diplomatic points over rivals Taiwan. The Chinese involvement in building various stadia in the Caribbean has been well documented, but it appears the knock-on effect has been more wide reaching:

China gave Antigua a $55 million grant to build the Sir Vivian Richards Cricket Stadium. It gave $30 million to Jamaica for a new Trelawny stadium. St. Lucia has both a cricket and a football stadium courtesy of Beijing. The 70,000 people of Dominica have received the aid equivalent of $1,600 per person in the form of a cricket grounds, new drains for the capital and better roads.

The immediate reason for this largesse is Beijing's determination to diplomatically isolate Taiwan. Says Harry Sung of the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington, D.C.: "Their top priority is to isolate Taiwan. Most of the remaining countries that recognize Taiwan are located in the Caribbean and Latin America."

China's cricket diplomacy led to two West Indian countries, Grenada and Dominica, derecognizing Taiwan as an independent country. Of the remaining 24 countries that recognize Taiwan, four are in the Caribbean and two of these play cricket.

March 7, 2007

Ooh aah Glenn

Posted on 03/07/2007 in Miscellaneous

This video amused us. It’s very silly – just a compilation of clips to the words of a 12th Man tune, but well worth a squizz.

February 11, 2007

World Cup in spotlight after match-fix claims

Posted on 02/11/2007 in Miscellaneous

Next month's World Cup in the West Indies will be the most thoroughly policed cricket tournament ever staged, writes Scyld Berry in the Sunday Telegraph.

January 21, 2007

Ultimate reality TV

Posted on 01/21/2007 in Miscellaneous

In the Sunday Telegraph Mike Atherton jumps on the Big Brother bandwagon and also draws on the recent Herschelle Gibbs controversies to say that cricket is the ultimate reality show.

Players have long known that their every move – every suspicious thrust of hand in pocket, every touch of nail on ball – is open to scrutiny. The more recent advent of stump microphones, intended to bring the sound and fury of the game to the viewer, means that a player's words, and therefore his thought processes and character, are open to scrutiny, too.

Meanwhile, this week England announced the seven-man panel who will try and work out what when wrong during the Ashes series, a few other things besides. The chairman is Ken Schofield, the former chief of the PGA Golf Tour, and in the Sunday Telegraph Scyld Berry tries to find out a bit more about him. However, he says that even this review committee is unlikely to be radical enough.

When Schofield said he brought passion alone to the party, he was not quite correct. Parallels and analogies are not always useful but this one might well be. Working out of a small office at the Oval, where he met men of Surrey like May and Stewart, Schofield built up the European Tour in the same way that English cricket has to grow if it is to match Australia's

December 31, 2006

Ghosting could come back to haunt players

Posted on 12/31/2006 in Miscellaneous

Here’s an unusual piece from The Sunday Telegraph, but one which is well worth a read. Michael Atherton unveils the process behind ghosted columns (where a journalist talks to a player whose opinions then form a column) and suggests that there are probably more risks than rewards for the players. He looks at Sajid Mahmood, among others, who got into hot water with the ECB for his comments about not being bowled enough.

Privately, Mahmood has complained that he was 'turned over' by his ghost. Unsurprisingly, the paper disagree and since the ghost in question is an excellent young journalist, who would have known the sensitivity of the issue, it is unlikely. The thoughts on Flintoff's captaincy may well have been paraphrased but they would have reflected the gist of the conversation. Being 'turned over' is as easy a get-out clause for a player, as for the journalist who, when confronted by an irate player, blames his editor for manipulating his copy.

The next time that Mahmood was scheduled to do a column, his phone was switched off for six hours. When the ghost finally got hold of him (from Kuala Lumpur, of all places, which sums up the whole business) Mahmood complained that he was tired and had nothing to say. When pushed, he asked that his exact words be used for the column.

December 29, 2006

How to level the playing field

Posted on 12/29/2006 in Miscellaneous

Australia are once again moving away from the pack in international cricket and John Buchanan, the coach, has said it is down to the rest to catch up. However, in The New Zealand Herald, Greg Barns argues that if the ICC is to really push forward with its idea of expanding the game it is time for a divisional structure in Test cricket, so that teams have promotion and relegation to focus on.

So how about taking a leaf out of soccer's book and adopting a tier system in which teams are relegated and promoted. One of the reasons why soccer is so popular across the globe is because it operates on this basis. Small countries like Ecuador and Croatia have an opportunity to win World Cup qualifiers and then be "promoted" into the World Cup finals every four years. One way to do this would be to create divisions of countries. Australia, England, India, South Africa and Pakistan and perhaps Sri Lanka would be a natural premier division.

December 20, 2006

Shreck outside the box

Posted on 12/20/2006 in Miscellaneous

Cracking story courtesy of This is Nottingham of how eco-friendly Ben Foster got more than he bargained for when testing his newly-invented biodegrabale box against Notts speedster Charlie Shreck. The box worked fine, but Foster hadn't reckoned on covering his eye-balls, fnarr fnarr, and took a painful above the eye after Shreck dug one in short. "I am pretty sure it was an accident":said a sheepish Foster afterwards, before adding: "The box stood up well".

December 10, 2006

A fine delivery

Posted on 12/10/2006 in Miscellaneous

	Cricketers may look and sound better on the field than behind a lectern but over the years there have been some cracking cricket speeches by non-professional cricketers © Getty Images

If the cricket isn't very entertaining at least the after-dinner speeches will keep you awake. Michael Fullilove, without punning on his name, writes a piece on best cricket speeches in The Age

As prime minister, Menzies became famous for timing his overseas travel to coincide with important cricket matches. That practice was obvious even in 1938. In his VCA speech, Menzies noted that by some extraordinary circumstance, prime minister Joseph Lyons had asked him to go to Britain that year to confer with ministers "about something or other", and that he had sent word to the conference organisers asking that they keep the full list of the Australian cricket fixtures next to their inkwells

In language that may inspire a few of the current Australian line-up, Denton urged Border not to retire prematurely. "You'll know the right time to get out. There'll be any number of telltale signs. One day, for instance, you'll call for a runner and they'll send out someone with a walking frame. Or maybe one day you'll find yourself prodding the pitch — not to smooth out any bumps, but to look for a nice, soft spot where you can have a nap. Or you may simply find yourself going for a quick two, turning for the second run, and then completely forgetting why it was you were running in the first place."

December 5, 2006

Remember Banjo?

Posted on 12/05/2006 in Miscellaneous

Remember Hamid ‘Banjo’ Cassim, the key figure in the match-fixing scandal of 2000? Ajay Shankar, from The Indian Express, caught up with the 'Biltong man' in Pretoria.

Cassim quickly steers the subject to his “friends” in Indian cricket. “I have great respect for Kapil Dev. Paaji is my hero. How is Ajay Jadeja? He was a good friend. And Mohammed Azharuddin? He is a great guy, it’s unfortunate that everybody turned on him. I knew Ali Irani (former physio) very well too, I hope he is fine."

December 1, 2006

12th Man for Packer

Posted on 12/01/2006 in Miscellaneous

Following last week's tremendous news that Billy Birmingham (pictured) is releasing a new 12th Man album, it has been revealed that he will be imitating Kerry Packer - a man who, in the height of his powers, Birmingham failed to recognise.

When 12th Man creator Billy Birmingham was once told by Nine Network cricket commentator Tony Greig that Kerry loved his work, his first response was “Kerry who?”.

“It goes down as one of my greatest faux pas,” says Birmingham in Sydney promoting his latest album.

[...]

Benaud interrupts Packer midway through a high stakes poker game with God asking for advice now Nine’s chief executive, Eddie McGuire, has “boned” the commentating team and replaced them with Birmingham “because he can do all the voices”.

“It’s kind of a weird recording — life imitating art, imitating life,” he says.

More at the Border Mail

November 26, 2006

Simply marvellous

Posted on 11/26/2006 in Australian cricket

	Billy Birmingham relaxes © SMH

Fantastic news for fans of the highly irreverent 12th Man CDs – and that includes most of the editorial team – comes with the release this week of the seventh offering – and the first for five years - from Billy Bimingham. Called Boned, it sees a return of the commentators whose utter scorn of political correctness has become legendary.

The Sydney Morning Herald caught up with Birmingham as he put the finishing touches to the double CD.

Here's the drum on the new 12th Man album. Richie Benaud is so peeved with Eddie McGuire's cost-cutting decision to sack the entire Channel Nine commentary team - and hire Billy Birmingham to do all their voices and cover the Ashes series himself - that he forms a band called Richie and Da Boyz who do a remake of Birmingham's song Marvellous in a bid to get their own back against a man who has forged a career out of taking the piss out of them.

And it’s apparent that Birmingham in the flesh is as irreverent as his characters.

I'm all over the place like a suicide bomber's sandshoe … There's so much material. The drama has been trying to cut it all down so it fits onto a double album … It couldn't have happened in any other country. We're a nation of sports nuts and piss-takers and all I've done is combine the two.

November 24, 2006

Cricket ball to oval ball

Posted on 11/24/2006 in Miscellaneous

Here's something a little different to break up all the Ashes talk. It's an interesting piece from The Australian which talks about cricket's role in the development of rugby league in Australia.

Australia's top cricketers were reduced to receiving allowances, while the ABC began to build up financial reserves from Test match income. The change left cricket in a similar situation to rugby union, which was experiencing a groundswell of discontent over the fact the NSW Rugby Union was raking in large profits through gate-receipts from the unpaid labour of their footballers.

November 16, 2006

Hoggy's video diaries

Posted on 11/16/2006 in Ashes

Matthew Hoggard is doing a video tour diary from Australia for The Times. He's sent over three so far, all well worth a look, and available on YouTube.

Ashes poetry

Posted on 11/16/2006 in Ashes

Touring sides are increasingly bloated with personnel these days. For all the coaches, trainers – masseurs, even – that litter the dressing rooms, England can now add a resident poet, David Fine, from Bakewell in Derbyshire. Come January, batsmen's concerns might revolve around their stanzas, not their stance...

He will write 25 poems, one for each day’s play of the Ashes, following funding from Arts Council England.

"Wordsworth, Tennyson, Betjeman, Housman, Chesterton and Hughes have all gone out to bat for cricket, in verse.

"A line is a ball, a rhyme perhaps a wicket.

"In the stands, this is reflected by the 41 chants and songs in the Barmy Army's Barmy Harmonies for last year's Ashes Tour," he said.

The BBC have the full story.

Batting is no guessing game

Posted on 11/16/2006 in Australian cricket

A scientific study claims that top batsmen can predict the sort of ball a bowler is going to deliver before it even leaves his hand.

A report by Dr Sean Müller of RMIT University in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology states that the best batsman can predict how a ball will swing and where it will bounce well before it's airborne.

"[Experienced players] can pick up ... cues that the intermediate and novice players don't or aren't sensitive to."

October 26, 2006

Living Doll, pasty poms

Posted on 10/26/2006 in Ashes

So Australia’s throng of fans, cheerily known as the Fanatics, have a songbook for the Ashes to combat England’s notoriously boisterous and equally cheery Barmy Army. The Courier Mail have a list of songs England can expect to “enjoy”, including:

Monty Panesar's Useless
Tune: My old mans a dustman

Monty Panesar useless, a poor old English chap
& when he's not spin bowling, he's visiting the quack.
He's useless in the covers, he's useless in the slips
And when he straps the pads on, he'll pass out with the yips

And...

Ode to a British girlfriend
Tune: Living Doll, Cliff Richard

Got myself a yawning, boring, pasty, nagging, whinging pom
Got to do your best to leave her just cause she's a whinging pom
She's got a lazy eye & big fat thighs from all those chips & pies
She's not the only boring, pasty, nagging, whinging pom

Oh dear. No word yet from the Barmy Army and what their song list might be…

October 25, 2006

Sledging...cartoon-style

Posted on 10/25/2006 in Ashes

Over at The Corridor there's a sneak preview of a collection of cartoon-postcards called Postcards from the Sledge, based on famous sledges in cricket. Beach, the artist, has kindly donated a copy to Cricinfo and we'll have a review of the cards for you very soon.

October 21, 2006

Gilchrist the philanthropist

Posted on 10/21/2006 in Miscellaneous

	Adam Gilchrist with nine-year old Mangesh © Getty Images

Steve Waugh started it. Now, it's Adam Gilchrist making a difference. The stark divide between some vast riches and devastating poverty in this country tugs at the heartstring of all Australian cricketers when they visit here. Gilchrist took it upon himself to sponsor a young impoverished boy in Mumbai, giving him an education he could never have dreamt of.

"The smile on his face said it all when he was able to meet me. Regardless of whether I was an international cricket player or ran my own local shop it meant little to him.It was a look of great gratitude to meet the person that is helping his family and his life."

Read the ful piece in The Courier Mail.

October 13, 2006

A different life

Posted on 10/13/2006 in Miscellaneous

In India for the Champions Trophy, Neil Manthorp witnesses the harsh realities of life for the several thousand pavement dwellers in Mumbai and writes how such scenes bring out a person's benevolent side.

The pavement is wet from the thunderstorm the night before. But it is also far cleaner than the rest of the street because it is the home of half a dozen families. They are required to clear it for the benefit of passers-by between dawn and late evening, but there is no mistaking that it is their home. Or, 'home'.

Read the full piece in Supercricket.

October 4, 2006

Stamp duty

Posted on 10/04/2006 in Miscellaneous

Clayton Murzello meets who he says is “one of the most fascinating, yet unknown enthusiasts of the game”, a stamp collector who has amassed more than 30,000 cricket stamps in three decades of collecting. Read the interview in Mid-day, a Mumbai daily, here .

September 23, 2006

Keeping it simple

Posted on 09/23/2006 in Miscellaneous

Bob Woolmer's recent suggestions to legalise ball-tampering in order to even things out between batsmen and bowlers may not be in the best interests of the game, writes Bob Simpson in Sportstar. The trend of batsmen leaking runs at will has coincided with the decline in bowling standards.

But why, after 100 years plus and in an era which is claimed to be the most scientific and professional ever, do bowlers need outside aid and changes to the law when, for over a century, Test bowlers have used guile, skill, hard work and the mastery of line and length to obtain results? Is it that the modern bowlers have lost all these abilities?

The way forward is for bowlers to keep it simple, like Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, who've each fetched over 500 Test wickets by just sticking to the basics.

Tendulkar is back, doesn't it feel better?

Posted on 09/23/2006 in Miscellaneous

	When Sachin Tendulkar smiles, the world smiles with him © AFP

Cricket fans better stay tuned in as we can expect a long season of action and drama, with the Ashes series and the World Cup ahead, as well as Sachin Tendulkar's return to form, writes Peter Roebuck.

By next April, a hundred issues will have been settled, a thousand rumours will have been heard — some of them almost true — fifty conspiracy theories will have been mooted, none of them well pitched.

Read the full piece in The Hindu.

September 22, 2006

Inside edge or clean as a whistle?

Posted on 09/22/2006 in Miscellaneous

It's 20 years since India and Australia played out a titanic contest at Madras, only the second tie in the history of Test cricket.

The Times of India revisits the day and speaks to Maninder Singh, the last man to fall, who maintains that he got an inside edge and was wrongly given lbw.

On the other hand, Mid-day, a Mumbai-based tabloid, chats with Vikram Raju, the umpire who delivered the verdict, who sticks by his guns: "My decision was clean as a whistle".

Also read Cricinfo's coverage of the events - Eye-witness accounts from Bobby Simpson, Dean Jones, Greg Matthews and Ravi Shastri. There's also an interview with Dean Jones, who had no hesitation in terming the Test as one that 'marked the renaissance of Australian cricket'.

September 19, 2006

Coaching no use to the greats

Posted on 09/19/2006 in Miscellaneous

	The coach... according to Warne © Getty Images

In The Daily Telegraph, Derek Pringle supports Shane Warne’s recent comments and argues that a coach is not much use to great players.

This winter, England will tour India and Australia with as many as five coaches, and that is not counting the physiotherapist, masseur, doctor, media managers and security advisers who will accompany them. When England toured Australia in 1982-83, neither team had a coach.

The old days might not have been the way to do things, but Pringle goes on to suggest we might gone too far the other way ...

What Warne is really saying is that great players don't need coaches, and he is right. Certainly the most gifted players of my acquaintance, Ian Botham, Vivian Richards and Brian Lara, were instinctive and possessed great flair. The only advice they listened to came from their inner voice. Coaching, by contrast, is about advice based on method and analysis, things anathema to pure talent.

It all comes under the umbrella of team preparation which some coaches, perhaps justifying their hefty salaries, have pushed to the limits of acceptability. While computer and video analysis are considered standard now, wacky ideas such as the use of earpieces between coach and captain (a Bob Woolmer idea subsequently banned by the International Cricket Council) and studying the Art of War by the ancient Chinese general, Sun Tzu (another Buchanan initiative), have invited derision and not just from the press.

September 13, 2006

Greed is good when looking east

Posted on 09/13/2006 in Miscellaneous

Hardly a week goes by these days without someone excitedly claiming that cricket is about to take-off in China. Now it emerges that ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed will be in Beijing next week to find out how the land lies.

The China Cricket Association has unveiled a strategic plan that has 60,000 schoolchildren playing cricket in three years and 150,000 in five years, with Beijing, Shanghai and Dalian the hubs for promoting the game. Mandarin editions of the Laws of Cricket are now available in China while Australian cricketing officials have visited the country to conduct coaching courses.

But perhaps the real reason that cricket’s bosses are so keen on China was found in a remark by Syed Ashraful Huq, the boss of the Asian Cricket Council when he told DNA Sport that if China participated in future World Cups then “lucrative commercial windfalls would follow”. He added: “As soon as China breaks through, I foresee the total global revenues for cricket increasing by up to 30 to 40%."

As Gordon Gekko said in Wall Street: "Greed is good, greed is right … greed works."

September 12, 2006

Cricket under the sea

Posted on 09/12/2006 in Miscellaneous

It’s widely accepted that cricketers are a barmy lot. But even by those standards, four people who decided to play an impromptu game on a sandbank on the Skate Bank in middle of Scotland’s Moray Firth can safely be described as barking. One of them was quoted in The Daily Telegraph as saying:

The charts have not been updated since 1918, so there was a chance that it had moved or shrunk. However, we decided it was worth investigating. My brother would not allow me to take his proper cricket gear, but we found a small bat and a tennis ball and set out to play the first game on the sandbar for 80 years.

Unfortunately, their energetic bowling and their enthusiastic celebrations were mistaken by a member of public on the shore more than a mile away as signals for help and a rescue helicopter and a lifeboat were launched to rescue them!

September 11, 2006

Sunny@stumps

Posted on 09/11/2006 in Miscellaneous

Surprise surprise. The legendary Sunil Gavaskar is thinking of making a foray into blogging. Gavaskar was the star guest on the second day of BlogCamp, India's biggest blog unconference.

I look around and I see almost everyone here sitting with a laptop in front. I belong to the transistor generation. My columns even now are written in longhand.

Back on the circuit

Posted on 09/11/2006 in Miscellaneous

The Indian board has nominated three umpires for ICC's Panel and Suresh Shastri is one of them. Returning to international umpiring after eight years, Shastri speaks to The Indian Express about what lies ahead.

"I am not young but at the same time I cannot be called a veteran too. There are many in the Elite panel who are 55-58 but there are still good. I think, as you go ahead, you tend to handle pressure better. One thing I have learnt in these years to stay in control of the proceedings, and in these times, it’s important."

September 8, 2006

Apart from being Superman, what should coaches do?

Posted on 09/08/2006 in Miscellaneous

Quite apart from being Superman, what does a coach really need to be given that he himself never has to face a ball, asks Harsha Bhogle in The Indian Express.

Balls to it all ...

Posted on 09/08/2006 in Miscellaneous

Mike Haysman joins the long line of experts who back the move to legalise ball tampering:

The skill of a bowler to make a cricket ball perform in an unconventional way to deceive the batsmen is an integral part of the game. That ability separates the best from the average and only the best can influence a game by perfecting the art. Constant deviation does not guarantee habitual success. Why should a bowler not be allowed to further display his skill, utilising means naturally found on a cricket field? By the way, bottle tops have never been discovered loitering harmlessly at extra cover, waiting to be stealthily employed!

What to learn more about Mike Haysman? Read Robert Houwing's profile in Cricinfo.

September 1, 2006

It's not just cricket's attitude that stinks

Posted on 09/01/2006 in Miscellaneous

In The Times, former Wisden editor Tim de Lisle highlights the fact that cricket's international merry-go-round is not only hard on the players, it's also pretty environmentally unfriendly. He recalled that while editing Wisden Cricket Monthly a few years ago, he commissioned an investigation into the mileage of top players:

"We named the first winner — Australia's Ian Healy, who had done, from memory, about 70,000 miles. Within a few years, the winner (by then Stephen Fleming, of New Zealand) was doing 100,000 miles. International cricket’s total emissions, for a relatively small sport, must be colossal."

He then points out that the English county circuit is strewn with sponsored cars flying up and down the country's motorways. And then there is Asia.

"Open an Indian magazine and the chances are you will see Sachin Tendulkar sharing a little of his personal cachet with a motorbike. And administrators in the subcontinent still think it’s OK to give the man of the match a bike or even a car. Not even the umpires are immune. Fly Emirates, say their shirts, which is demeaning to them and damaging to the planet."

Batsman has a heart attack but plays on

Posted on 09/01/2006 in English cricket

A remarkable story in The Daily Telegraph of a man who put his approaching fifty ahead of the minor point that he was having a heart attack at the time.

"The old runs were a little bit lacking and I have been struggling to perform this season," he said. "But I was having a good game and found it too easy. I was getting sixes and fours and was feeling really good about my game. I think I was a bit of an idiot really. I should have stopped straight away because it could have finished me off there and then."

August 31, 2006

For Darrell Hair read the village vicar

Posted on 08/31/2006 in Umpires

It could have been a scene out of England, Their England ... two village sides battling it out in rural Gloucestershire, a vicar umpiring, cream teas about to be taken ...

Only one of the teams refused to play on after the Right Reverend Geoffrey Creese gave a controversial LBW decision and went home (but not before offering to pay for the uneaten teas!). As the local Forester newspaper reports, it's not just Darrell Hair who has problems ... and at least he doesn't have to give the sermon the next day.

As the captain of the Rev Creese's side said:

"He doesn't always get it right, but he's not biased ... he calls it as he sees it."

August 22, 2006

Cricket's hidden tactics are an open secret

Posted on 08/22/2006 in Miscellaneous

While the very suggestion that anyone might have been ball tampering causes outrage, Darren Berry in The Age says that it is rife - and what is more, that it could even enhance the game.

"A few months ago NSW fast bowler Nathan Bracken was censured after his comments about ball tampering. But what he said was absolutely true. Bracken said that during his time in English county cricket, his team, Gloucestershire, loaded one side of the ball with saliva that was thickened and sugary after sucking on mints. The result was for the ball to start moving through the air in an unnatural manner. The sexy term for this is reverse swing. This practice and others go on in most matches around the world."

While Berry does not advocate the use of industrial sanding machines to scuff up the ball, he raises some intersting points.

"What does it matter if the ball is thrown into the ground early to rough it up? Let the bowlers scratch the ball with their fingers if they wish; it is a skill that arguably adds to the game."

He concludes that with the game so heavily biased in favour of the batsmen, with limits on bouncers per over and improved bat technology, why not even the battle.

"Ball-tampering is rife in world cricket and the easy way to fix it is to loosen the law."

August 12, 2006

More idiocy than infamy

Posted on 08/12/2006 in Miscellaneous

Dean Jones's remark was uncalled for, even by his standards, but Peter Roebuck feels strongly that while Jones needs to serve his punishment, he should be welcomed back to the community. Roebuck argues that people should direct their anger against oppression of more harmful proportions.

Headstrong but fundamentally generous, the tone of his remark was out of character.But it was a momentary lapse. Let anger be reserved for the violence that destroys lives, and for words intended to hurt.

Read the full piece in The Hindu

August 10, 2006

Cricket and the meaning of life

Posted on 08/10/2006 in Miscellaneous

If by any chance you should find yourself in Canada this weekend, and more specifically in Toronto at 4.30pm on Sunday, then head down to the South Asian film festival at the NFB who are screening the film Cricket and the Meaning of Life.

The film was voted the winner at the Reel-to-Reel Ontario festival and, as the name suggests, it’s not just a film about cricket – it’s about life itself.

July 21, 2006

A pilot's bravery

Posted on 07/21/2006 in Miscellaneous

A sobering story from the Sun of a 16-year-old pilot who died when his Cessna light aircraft crashed on a cricket pitch in Southend, Essex. It seems that Sam Cross deliberately steered the plane away from houses as it was coming down. One eyewitness said:

“I suspect he deliberately pointed the plane to make sure he didn’t hit anything. Half an hour earlier the field would have been full of children coming home from school.”

July 16, 2006

Poring over the field

Posted on 07/16/2006 in Miscellaneous

Half the year has drifted by already, and Kevin Mitchell's thoughts are turning towards the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards. For precisely the reason that there have been no personalities to speak of in any of England's major sports. Cricket, rugby, football? Nope, nope, nope.

This time last year, of course, there were a whole team of possibles lining up. They all wore white and they would go on to take part in what Richie Benaud described as the best Ashes series he had seen. There were heroes from one to 11 in the England cricket team. Not so many now. If they retain the Ashes this winter, they will be back in contention, but they have had a fairly ordinary time of it since sending Ricky Ponting's men home so chastened last September

May 23, 2006

Cricket not crutches: Disabled Ugandans at bat

Posted on 05/23/2006 in Miscellaneous

Young Ugandans with disabilities taking part in a programme that aims to teach them a sport little known to many Africans, and help shatter overwhelmingly negative perceptions of disability on the continent, writes Daniel Wallis.

May 12, 2006

'Copter load of that

Posted on 05/12/2006 in Miscellaneous

Now the Surfer is going to try its best to stay away from Shane Warne and chopper gags… but it is sorely tempted to after it hears the news that Warne is to fly in by helicopter to deliver the match ball for Saturday's FA Cup final between Liverpool and West Ham in Cardiff. Warne is the first Australian in history to have such honours. Lucky boy.

April 29, 2006

Statistics don't always tell the complete story

Posted on 04/29/2006 in Miscellaneous

Cricket is a game to be relished not an account to be scrutinised, writes Peter Roebuck

Cricket needs to extract itself from the cold embrace of its statisticians. Over the last few seasons these calculators on two legs have wielded an inordinate influence ... In recent weeks, these dismal creations have complained about Jason Gillespie and the authenticity of the World XI matches played last October. The fact that no sensible person cares a hoot about matters of this sort passes them by.

April 23, 2006

Golden goose risks being overcooked

Posted on 04/23/2006 in Miscellaneous

As the discussion over player burn-out rumbles on, greed could kill the golden goose warns Rohit Brijnath in The Hindu.

Players are not robots, you can't pump in a few litres of nationalism and a gallon of money and ask them to keep playing. They have the right to complain about "too much cricket,'' even if the odd complainant has a belly that makes you wonder whether it's more a case of "too many jalebis.''

April 21, 2006

Young Engel lives on in the memory

Posted on 04/21/2006 in Miscellaneous

Matthew Engel, the editor of Wisden, and his wife Hilary have launched a charity in honour of their son, who died of cancer last year aged 13. The Laurie Engel Fund aims to help rebuild the cancer ward at the Birmingham Children’s Hospital. The Telegraph’s Robert Philip listens to Matthew talk movingly about the need for a new ward, his recollections of Laurie and about a campaign which has already had pledges from Chelsea FC and a promise from Bunbury Cricket Club to stage a cricket match.

"The oncology - a word I had never previously encountered, even in Scrabble - ward is a so-called modern wing of a Victorian hospital," Matthew explains. "It was built circa 1990 when the National Health Service had no money and it's a really cheap and nasty job which everybody hates.”

Read the original, heartbreaking article relating to Laurie's death here.

Continue reading "Young Engel lives on in the memory"

April 12, 2006

406 and all that at Port of Spain

Posted on 04/12/2006 in Miscellaneous

This day, 30 years ago, India's batsmen, led by Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath, chased down a mammoth fourth-innings target of 403 at Port of Spain, setting a stunning world record. Mid-day, the mumbai based daily, revisits the great chase. Also, click here to read KN Prabhu's eye-witness account.

April 8, 2006

Ordinary yet extraordinary

Posted on 04/08/2006 in Miscellaneous

It’s not just in the sporting arena where great acts take place, finds Peter Roebuck, as he meets some ordinary people performing extraordinary deeds around Johannesburg during his time there for the Wanderers Test.

March 30, 2006

A one-man show

Posted on 03/30/2006 in Miscellaneous

Cricinfo's All Today's Yesterday reminds us that this day, seven years ago, Brian Charles Lara played the innings of his life.

Surpassing a 501, a 375, a 277 or a 213 takes some doing, but this humble 153 not out against Australia in Barbados was the stuff of genius. At one point West Indies had been 98 for 6 in the first innings, still 392 behind Australia, but Lara's performance - nobody else on either side made 40 in the second innings - led them to 311 for 9 and an unforgettable one-wicket victory.

Click here to listen to the audio commentary of the great match. Listen to an extremely excited Fazeer Mohammad as he takes us through the final tense minutes. An eight-minute audio and worth every second of it. As Sambit Bal wrote once - But for light and song, for bliss and glory and for lifting the soul, who else but Brian Lara?

March 23, 2006

Walk the walk with Phil Tufnell

Posted on 03/23/2006 in Miscellaneous

© Cricinfo Ltd

Although not known for his athleticism or love of exercise during his playing days, Phil Tufnell is calling upon Ealing residents to join him on a sponsored walk along the Thames:

People are being encouraged to sign up today for their Thames Pathway Walk on Sunday, May 21, and help people in the area affected by cancer.

Phil Tufnell said: "I think that Walk Wonders is a smashing idea and I will definitely be pulling my boots on to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Relief. You don't have to be mega fit why not get a gang together, go walking and enjoy the walk along the Thames?"

March 20, 2006

Odumbe: Life after the ban

Posted on 03/20/2006 in Miscellaneous

Kenya's Daily Nation caught up with Maurice Odumbe and he talked about his life after being banned for associating with bookmakers. These days he stays away from cricket, preferring to read and play golf.

“I am in transition. Cricket was my life, you know, and I can’t just wake up one morning and forget about it ... I was born to enjoy myself. Why should I be miserable? Life is too short. Live and let live and don't have enemies. It's not worth it.”

March 17, 2006

The maid & the toothbrush

Posted on 03/17/2006 in Miscellaneous

Dean Jones recounts a hilarious anecdote about his epic knock in the famous tied Test at Madras. Read Ted Corbett's tour diary here

Gavaskar's last hurray

Posted on 03/17/2006 in Miscellaneous

This day, 19 years ago, Sunil Gavaskar, in what turned out to be his last Test, produced a master class against Pakistan on a crumbler. However, it didn't result in a win, Gavaskar fell four short of hundred, and India fell 16 runs short of the target. Click here to read HS Manjunath's write-up on the match

Harsha Bhogle, in a tribute piece to the little master, wrote about his legendary powers of concentration.

That 96, his last Test innings, was a masterpiece played on a mass of rubble trying to impersonate a pitch. The spinners were making the ball turn at right angles and jump past the nose. "I thought I would get 10," he [Gavaskar] later said. Mohinder Amarnath once told me that he thought his partner was in a trance. In a rare interview Gavaskar admitted that he never kept the ball out of sight, following it all the way from the slips to mid-off to the bowler's hand. And he swears it is true that he did not know what his score was when he was batting, for the mind was only focused on the ball, on the next ball. When Javed Miandad apologised for sledging at him during the legendary 96 at Bangalore, he smiled back saying he had no idea what was being said. He hadn't heard it. When Javed Miandad apologised for sledging at him ... he smiled back saying he had no idea what was being said. He hadn't heard it.

March 8, 2006

An ice way to play the game

Posted on 03/08/2006 in Miscellaneous

Some cricket-mad types in Estonia have taken to the ice to play the glorious game.

Just to prove that it’s snow joke (ouch, sorry), you can see a clip of ice cricket, as provided by the Reuters news agency, by clicking here.

[Thanks to Jamie Allaway for the link]

March 5, 2006

Cuba's cricket revolution

Posted on 03/05/2006 in Miscellaneous

The Daily Telegraph has a remarkable report on how cricket is making a big comeback in Cuba after disappearing for almost 30 years. It seems that Fidel Castro is worried young people on the island are becoming too Americanised and wants Cuba to feel more affinity with the Caribbean.

In the late 1990s, the game was confined to the traditional east of the island, but it soon spread to Havana, where there are more than 500 players now. "Thanks to someone in Argentina, we've got the rules of cricket translated into Spanish," Miss Ford told a journalist.

In the past couple of years, as gifts of equipment poured in from other cricket-playing nations, the potential for the sport percolated through to the powers that be.

March 4, 2006

Cricket comes to the rescue of India's tigers

Posted on 03/04/2006 in Miscellaneous

The travel writer, Simon Calder, dusted off his bat to take part in a very special cricket match, staged to help India's tigers

Pads: what a tiger does, and what I strapped on. It was my turn to bat. As I stepped up to the wicket, I hoped that the sun, and the opposition bowlers, would ease off a little on the heat

March 3, 2006

China to pick up cricket

Posted on 03/03/2006 in Miscellaneous

The world's most populous nation - China - is embracing the great game. Read the report in the Sydney Morning Herald here.

Also read about how Britain is giving its support to a new cricket revolution in Cuba.

March 1, 2006

The Googly - a new blog

Posted on 03/01/2006 in Miscellaneous

A new cricket blog has been launched today by the weblog publishing company Shiny Media and our very own Will Luke's editing it. It’s called The Googly. As you’d expect with a name like that, it's an irreverent look at cricket and its nuances, by professional writers - including Gideon Haigh.

February 24, 2006

Schools continue to get the chance to shine

Posted on 02/24/2006 in Miscellaneous

English and Indian schools are to link up to talk about cricket and learn about each other’s cultures as part of the Chance to Shine initiative. Read about it on Rediff here.

February 15, 2006

Racist insults lead BBC to close messageboard

Posted on 02/15/2006 in Miscellaneous

The BBC's Test Match Special messageboard has been closed today following a torrent of racist and abusive messages, as reported in today's Times:

Part of the site was suspended after the BBC received complaints that a number of users were sending insulting religious messages and promoting terrorism on the South Asian section of the Test Match Special website.

A trail of messages described as “absolutely sickening and reprehensible” is being investigated by the BBC in an attempt to trace the authors.

February 11, 2006

Downtime

Posted on 02/11/2006 in Miscellaneous

We had an unfortunate period of downtime which lasted 48 hours and affected all our blogs. We're back live again, so will start ploughing through the news here at The Surfer once again.

January 30, 2006

Jack Russell turns hand to goalkeeping

Posted on 01/30/2006 in Miscellaneous

Well, not strictly goalkeeping, but he's coaching Forest Green's footballers:

Forest Green boss Gary Owers told BBC Radio Gloucestershire: "Jack has got an interest in the goalkeeping side.

"He is taking it very seriously and it is not a gimmick. Hopefully he can bring something to our goalkeepers and the lads like having him around."

January 25, 2006

Spring clean your club

Posted on 01/25/2006 in Miscellaneous

Spring clean: Andrew Strauss and Geraint Jones roll up their sleeves at Bexley CC © Getty Images

The ECB’s NatWest CricketForce project is about to get underway for the fifth year running … and it’s not too late to get your club involved.

CricketForce encourages the game’s enthusiasts to give something back to their local community club by volunteering to undertake major renovations to clubhouses and grounds, as Andrew Strauss and Geraint Jones did last year, when they helped to spruce up Bexley CC in Kent.

To see how your club could benefit from the scheme, find out more here.

No time to play meek and humble

Posted on 01/25/2006 in Miscellaneous

What do Evo Morales, the Iranian government and the Board of Control for Cricket in India have in common?

Easy. All three are challenging the status quo and being condemned by the establishment and their minions for so doing.

Fazeer Mohammed in the Trinidad and Tobago Express defends India's stand on the Future Tours Programme,pointing out that the ICC are still in a state of denial about the transition of power.

January 22, 2006

Don't ignore history

Posted on 01/22/2006 in Miscellaneous

Mike Atherton comments in the Sunday Telegraph that modern players are increasingly ignorant of the players that came before them. This was highlighted recently by Virender Sehwag. After his 254 against Pakistan, he admitted not knowing "Pankaj Roy and Vinoo Mankad, the two Indian openers whose record opening stand of 413 Sehwag and Rahul Dravid fell three runs short of breaking." Atherton, a history graduate, feels the game's past is an important aspect of its future:

Therein lies the importance of an understanding of the past for today's sportsman. It won't make him a better player, but it gives him a link with both the past and the future; it provides some context and some meaning, so that, long after the bones have stiffened and the eyes have gone, it still matters. He is simply one link in the chain.

The Australians tend to look over their shoulder more than we do. The cult of the baggy green, the presentation of honours by former players, the lionising of The Invincibles and the custom by which a current player must give a talk on a former are all part of cherishing the past. They also go too far. When the 2001 Australians sat at Wimbledon in their baggy greens, it was enough to make you puke.

When the last two touring parties paid their respects at Gallipoli and the Western Front, they did so too conspicuously. Rather than respecting fallen heroes, it looked as if it was intended to polish their own image.

January 16, 2006

Moles departure shrouded in mystery

Posted on 01/16/2006 in Miscellaneous

The ramifications of the departure of
Andy Moles as Scotland’s coach continue to rumble on, with a report in the Scotsman on Sunday claiming that he was sacked rather than resigned, as Cricket Scotland’s media department maintain.

Following the blandest of media releases on Friday, no-one at Cricket Scotland appears to have been able to give a firm reason for Moles’s departure and few seem to believe that it was of his volition.

But the article by William Dick indicates that it might not have been because of player unrest, as most reports have suggested. “It has emerged that there were concerns about various aspects of the coach's performance from early in his reign, begging the question why it took bosses so long to act.”

January 6, 2006

Messengers of peace

Posted on 01/06/2006 in Miscellaneous

Cricket in Afghanistan has a bright future, as The Observer Sport Monthly magazine reports.

December 19, 2005

Supersubs - how super

Posted on 12/19/2005 in Miscellaneous

Not everyone is a fan of the Supersub rule. However, it does have at least one supporter - Clive Lloyd. Read what he has to say here.

December 4, 2005

Lara scales another mountain

Posted on 12/04/2005 in Miscellaneous

Shoaib Ahmed celebrates Brian Lara's ascent to the top of the run-scoring mountain and traces the progression of the record down the years.

November 15, 2005

Batsmen and fitness

Posted on 11/15/2005 in Miscellaneous

Trevor Chesterfield writes about how Sanath Jayasuriya's injury should have been handled better and takes a look at batsmen whose career ended because of injury.

October 21, 2005

Memorabilia memories

Posted on 10/21/2005 in Miscellaneous

Harold Larwood’s main weapon of the Bodyline tour was the ball, but a bat he used in the infamous 1932-33 series has sold at auction in England for £5200. See Larwood's profile here and check out his Test statistics.

October 17, 2005

A tale of three icons

Posted on 10/17/2005 in Miscellaneous

Peter Badel talks to Shane Warne, Brian Lara and Andrew Flintoff about how they handle fame, and the pitfalls that come with it.

October 13, 2005

Where have all the wicketkeepers gone?

Posted on 10/13/2005 in Miscellaneous

Sanjjeev Samyal speaks to Darren Berry, one-time understudy to Ian Healy, who is upset at the quality of wicketkeepers today. He says:

The name of the game is sacrifice glovemen for better batsmen — Andy Flower, [Adam] Gilchrist and Geraint Jones, who is terrible, — which is disappointing. Keeping has become a secondary option. Now, the selectors look at how many runs he can score.

Berry's advice to selectors everywhere:

Pick the best wicketkeeper and the best people to ask would be Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh, because those are the guys who are going to suffer.

October 6, 2005

Made-for-television drama

Posted on 10/06/2005 in Miscellaneous

Peter Lalor of The Australian writes on the potential of television:

Broadcasters have done a great job translating the excitement of live one-day cricket on to the box. Cricket's next technological revolution, if there are more games like this, might involve channelling excitement from the loungerooms to the arena.

October 4, 2005

China is cracking cricket

Posted on 10/04/2005 in Miscellaneous

China are the latest country to embrace cricket, as Forbes.com reports. Read Cricinfo's take on this story, here.

September 25, 2005

Coach corner

Posted on 09/25/2005 in Miscellaneous

One played cricket for Zimbabwe and currently coaches England; the other turned out for England and coaches Pakistan. The two will go head to head soon as England travel to Pakistan for a Test and one-day series. Check out Steve James's interview with Duncan Fletcher - titled "English cricket's reluctant hero" - in the Sunday Telegraph and also read Stephen Brenkley's chat with Bob Woolmer in the Independent, as he plots to make life gruelling for the English tourists.

As for the Indian coach ... well, let's just say he has a bit more on his plate at the moment.

September 22, 2005

Captain, wicketkeeper, batsman, star

Posted on 09/22/2005 in Miscellaneous

R Kaushik of Deccan Herald meets Tatenda Taibu, the Zimbabwe captain, and finds out what goes on within the mind of a 22-year-old leading a weak side. While talking about off-field pressures, Taibu says:

Obviously, you just try and control the controllables and forget about what you can't control. If you try and control things that you can't control, your mind will have excess things to worry about.

Read on here.

Also check out Cricinfo's interview with another African captain - Graeme Smith talks to Nagraj Gollapudi.

Numbers and humans

Posted on 09/22/2005 in Miscellaneous

Harsha Bhogle comments in The Indian Express on the nineties made by Gautam Gambhir and Rahul Dravid yesterday:

These nineties often draw unreasonable comments for it is what has been achieved rather than what has been missed that is often of the essence. Centuries are happy landmarks, they are indicators of good batsmanship but we worship them too much for they can sometimes become an exercise in self-indulgence.

Indeed. And yet, the difference between 102 and 100 will always be far less than that between 100 and 98. They're only numbers, but we're only human.

Have a bat, Mr President

Posted on 09/22/2005 in Miscellaneous

Brian Lara has “one of the greatest days of my life” when he meets Nelson Mandela and gives him a bat with the message “I love you President”. Mandela felt Lara was “a handsome young chap”. See what it was all about here.

September 21, 2005

Dancing in the dark

Posted on 09/21/2005 in Miscellaneous

G Rajaraman of Outlook magazine traces a tale that has developed into Bollywood masala - involving a bar girl, betting and cricketers. But are the cops anywhere close to the right trail?

September 19, 2005

The Surfer begins

Posted on 09/19/2005 in Miscellaneous

Welcome to The Surfer.

It was inevitable, sooner or later, that Cricinfo would start its own blogs. In the first of a series of them, we present The Surfer. This blog, as the name indicates, will aim to showcase interesting cricket writing across the internet. These will encompass features, interviews, opinion pieces, debates -- anything that we find stimulating reading.

The Surfer will replace our popular feature, Best of the Web, as it does what that did and more. It will be managed by Siddhartha Vaidyanathan, Jenny Thompson and Peter English, with occasional guidance and help from Amit Varma. We hope you enjoy it. Feel free to email your feedback to surfer@cricinfo.com.

And watch out for our other blogs, coming soon.

A shirtfront of an era

Posted on 09/19/2005 in Miscellaneous

We all know that this is a good age for batting, a shirtfront of an era, as it were. Kunal Ganju, in a piece titled "Batting through the ages", reinforces this belief with a couple of graphical illustrations.

Also see these two pieces on the same subject from Cricinfo's archives: "Bowling's dark age" by Gideon Haigh; and "Is there a crisis in cricket?" from 23 Yards.

The new superpowers

Posted on 09/19/2005 in Miscellaneous

In an essay in the London Review of Books titled "Cricket’s Superpowers", David Runciman contends that the Ashes is not cricket's biggest rivalry. He writes:

The rivalry in international cricket that counts at present is the one between Australia and India. If this were geopolitics, then Australia would be the United States, the one unquestioned superpower for over a decade, used to getting their own way ever since they saw off their rival superpower, the West Indies, in the early 1990s (the West Indian cricket team, like the Russian state, now seems to be in a condition of permanent and rather squalid decline). India, meanwhile, would be China, the superpower of the future, with all the resources needed to beat the Australians at their own game – the manpower, the talent, the raw nationalist passion – so long as a way can be found by their often corrupt and incompetent administrators of harnessing these obvious advantages. And England? England would be the EU: once the centre of the world, but currently engaged in an urgent and not always pretty attempt to modernise in order not to get left behind.

Read the full piece.

(Link via email from Ish.)

September 18, 2005

China v India ...

Posted on 09/18/2005 in Miscellaneous

... could be bigger than the Ashes by the end of this century, writes Will Buckley in the Observer.

September 15, 2005

So many heroes, so little fiction

Posted on 09/15/2005 in Miscellaneous

Cricket has so many theatrical moments, characters, plots, sub-plots, twists, sub-twists ... Why, wonders Sarah Crompton in The Daily Telegraph, is there a dearth of suitably awe-inspiring fictional depictions of the game?