Jack Hyams, the world’s most prolific club cricketer, will celebrate his impending 90th birthday with a pair of fixtures at the Clive Woodbridge Oval in Valencia, Spain, this weekend.
Hyams, who is Life President of the Barmy Army, enters his tenth decade on December 18, having amassed over 123,000 runs in all cricket, including 171 centuries. He has played ten matches so far this year for Billericay CC Veterans, while three years ago, he took part in five consecutive fixtures for Nomads CC on a tour of Spain, when the club was left short of players.
As a youth, Hyams was offered professional cricket and football terms but his father forbade him from taking that career path. Instead he waited until after the Second World War, when he played football for Bradford Park Avenue and took part in a memorable defeat of Arsenal in the FA Cup.
After a 2.6 million-selling debut album, her own talk show and nominations for Grammy, BRIT and MTV awards, Lily Allen has finally received the recognition she wants as Lancashire made her an honorary member of the club.
Allen was granted membership in recognition of her national and international promotion of cricket and was also presented with a Lancashire team shirt and bat signed by stars such as Freddie Flintoff and Sajid Mahmood.
The musician catapulted into the cricketing mainstream during the 2009 Ashes when her twitter updates about the series earned her a call-up to the TMS box. She delighted traditionalists around the world by declaring her preference for Test cricket over the shorter formats at a time when Test cricket needed all the support it could muster.
From such heady heights it will be important for Allen not to get carried away with her success in a messy excess of ECB 40 League fixtures next summer.
Just as his chances of making the national team were getting slimmer, Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar has undergone liposuction to remove excess fat from his body. The 34-year-old has not played a Test in more than two years, and the latest move is part of his efforts to end the fitness troubles and injury woes that have severely hampered his career.
"After the liposuction to trim down his weight, Shoaib will require at least three to four months to make a complete recovery and be available to play competitive cricket once again," Dr Waqar Ahmed, a sports medicine specialist, told Pakistan daily Dawn.
After the surgery Shoaib is going to be lighter in the pocket as well, since the PCB refused to foot his burgeoning medical bills. "He is a centrally contracted player and he is supposed to consult our medical panel and inform us before undergoing any medical treatment but he didn't do this before opting for the liposuction," a PCB official said.
Just days after an Auckland woman cricketer broke a world record for catching 33 tennis balls within a minute, the Guinness Book of Records had another cricket entry when Neville Wadia became the oldest player to hit a century in minor cricket. Wadia, at 63 years and 305 days, scored 105 for Waghodiya Road against Vrajdham Vadli Pariwar team at Siabaug Ground in Vadodara on March 28 this year. Eight months later, his feat was recognised in the coveted book. He isn’t stopping there. Wadia wishes to continue playing and also offer free coaching to youngsters. No country for old men? Not for Neville Wadia.
Move over Jonty. Auckland's Katie Perkins has entered the Guinness Book of Records for catching an astonishing 33 tennis balls within a minute, fired at 100 kmph. For good measure, the record she broke by ten balls was held by an Aussie, Anthony Kelly. Appearing on the television show NZ Smashes Guinness World Records, Perkins said, “Everyone wasn’t expecting me to break it and I did it for a bit of a laugh. But as soon as I did it, I was in the zone.” And now she's in the NZ emerging players' team - with a side career as a 'catching coach' in the offing?
Stephen Fleming may not be interested in coaching his nation's cricket team, but he hasn't been lost to New Zealand sport entirely. The former New Zealand batsman turned football motivator this week on the eve of the All Whites must-win World Cup qualifier against Bahrain. "[Fleming] just gave us wee things to make us try and relax, and told us to just try and think of it as another game, get on with the job," said Michael McGlinchey, the New Zealand mid-fielder. "Ryan Nelsen and the more experienced guys pitched in with their thoughts as well and it was nice to hear what sorts of things they have to say." Victory over Bahrain in Wellington on Saturday would propel New Zealand to the World Cup finals for the first time in 27 years.
Remember Jason Krejza? If you don’t, he’s a tall Australian offspinner who made his Test debut a year ago in Nagpur and took 12 for 358 against India. Krejza played another Test but has since been forgotten by most people, but not all.
There’s a group in Australia lobbying for Krejza’s return to the national team and they called for the public to observe 12 minutes silence on November 10, in remembrance of the Indian batsmen Krejza felled in 2008.
"[It's] to think about and reflect upon those 12 wickets, those glorious 12 wickets in Nagpur and to think about the impact Jason Krejza can make on the national side," group spokesman Ben McKay said. There’s a Facebook group too – “Concerned Tasmanians for Jason Krejza" – with 231 members at the last time of checking.
Kevin Pietersen and MCC have teamed to help this year’s BBC appeal for Children in Need. KP was recently unveiled as the new ‘Brylcreem boy’, in a deal worth nearly £2 million, and it seems he wants to extend his name to an even more worthy pursuit.
Pietersen is auctioning “a money can’t buy prize” that includes coaching in the MCC indoor school at Lord’s, a private tour of the ground and dressing rooms, lunch in the players’ dining room and signed memorabilia.
Let’s just hope Pietersen’s Achilles holds-up well enough to make prize day.
The ‘Pietersen prize’ goes under the hammer on Monday 16th on the ‘Things Money Can't Buy' auction on Terry Wogan's BBC Radio Two show.
At 53, and with an appetite for the good life, a 900-mile trek should be beyond Ian Botham. But instead he’s unveiled plans for a 13th charity walk to begin April next year.
'Beefy's Great Forget Me Not Walk' will mark the 25th anniversary of his first trek in aid of leukaemia research as he walks length of Britain from Scotland's John O'Groats to England's Land's End.
"My walk in 2010 will be extra special for me," Botham said. “I never forget why I put myself through the pain and blisters. I won't stop until we beat childhood leukaemia.” When Botham set out for his first walk in 1985 only 20 percent of children with leukaemia survived. “We're up to about 90 percent survival now and that's remarkable."
Botham heads to South Africa on Wednesday for his commentary duties and has cemented a reputation for uncompromising barrages. This same unrelenting attitude has helped him raise some £10 million pounds for leukaemia research and he has no intention of stopping there.
Listeners to the BBC's Test Match Special are in for a rare treat this winter, in the form of a gruff, monotone Zimbabwean, whose guarded utterances required the travelling press corps to develop forensic journalistic skills during his seven-year stint at the helm of the England cricket team.
That's right, Duncan Fletcher has put aside his ingrained loathing of the media and been persuaded out of his bubble, and will provide expert analysis during England's fixtures in his home town of Cape Town this winter. Having performed a consultancy role during South Africa's successful tour of Australia last year, he is ideally placed to provide insight from both camps.
Aside from a regular column in The Guardian, Fletcher has kept a low media profile since his no-holds-barred autobiography was released in 2007, although in the TMS box he will have a chance to team up with his former sidekick, Michael Vaughan, who was England's victorious captain when they last toured South Africa in 2004-05.
For his fans and former foes alike, there will be great nostalgic value in hearing Fletcher utter his favourite lines for one last time - not least "aww look ..." and "this is not the right forum ..." especially if Graeme Swann starts spinning England to victory.
For the last five years Eric Tindill, a double international for New Zealand at Test level in cricket and rugby, has been cricket’s oldest living Test player. And two days ago, Tindill went past England’s Frank MacKinnon, who lived 98 years and 324 days, to become the oldest Test cricketer ever.
A left-hand opening batsman and wicketkeeper, Tindill toured England with Curly Page's team in 1937. On the way home he had the distinction of catching Don Bradman off Jack Cowie's bowling – the only time Bradman played against a New Zealand side. The match, between New Zealand and South Australia, was played in Adelaide to help cover debts incurred in England. Cowie and Tindill were delighted with their prized wicket, but others reckoned they cost New Zealand Cricket a fortune. Bradman was dismissed for 11 in the opening over on a Saturday morning and thousands of spectators, queuing for entry, simply turned around and left. Tindill also umpired in Tests and was a Wellington and New Zealand selector.
Tindill was also an international rugby referee and is currently the oldest living All Black.
Andrew Strauss’s men aren’t the only England cricketers touring Africa this winter. Cricket Without Boundaries (CWB), a UK charity that aims to increase awareness about HIV/AIDS through teaching cricket, is sending two teams of volunteers out to Rwanda and Kenya.
CWB started in 2005 and works in partnership with the Cricket Associations in each country, the relevant British High Commissions and the ICC to ensure sustained development of cricket. They return having established successful projects in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Botswana over the last three years.
They just completed a two-week project in Botswana, where volunteers overcame the challenges of lost baggage; rain on the ‘mini-world cup’ tournament they organised; and the odd blown generator to teach a staggering 1311 kids the basics of cricket and train 57 coaches who receive ICC certificates.
With four of England’s top-six Test batsmen this winter likely to be African born, CWB are nurturing a crucial pool of talent for years to come.
"Get off the gym and bowl" – that’s the message former Australian players have for the country’s fast bowlers, who’ve probably given the team physio sleepless nights in India. Steve Rixon, Geoff Lawson and Doug Walters told the Courier Mail that it’s time for Australia to stop hiding behind the excuse of excessive cricket, which many like to believe is the reason behind four fast bowlers getting early return tickets home.
"Some of the best specimens running around in cricket have the bodies of a Greek Adonis, but we can't get them on the park to bowl,” says Rixon, who feels bowlers are spending too much time pumping iron instead of running in at the nets. Walters agreed with Rixon that the training methods need to be reworked. Lawson, also a former Pakistan coach, rubbished suggestions of workload saying, "Brett Lee has hardly played any cricket for two years, so you wouldn't think that was from overuse. When I was coach of Pakistan we looked at every injury systematically and how our fitness people were dealing with it."
Among the packed crowd watching India play Australia at the PCA Stadium in Mohali on Monday was a group of highly excited young women getting their first taste of cricket in India. They were members of the Chinese national women’s cricket team, currently in India, training for the 2010 Asian Games where the sport will make its debut. Cricket is rarely shown on TV back in China but whatever they’d seen couldn’t have matched up to the noise and spectacle of a packed house. “We are used to watching rugby, badminton or gymnastics at home, but nothing is as big as cricket is here,” Zhou Haijie, an offpsinner, told The Indian Express. “Watching the game was very insightful,” Zhang Jing Jing said, “the Mexican waves in the stands were the most fun.” What hit them the most? The noise in the stadium after an Indian boundary. “It's so loud,” said offspinner Zhou Haijie. “I didn't know 35,000 people could make noise for a billion.”
Move over Bollywood, the IPL might soon be coming to a multiplex near you. The Twenty20 league had invited tenders for its theatrical telecast rights for matches beginning next season until 2019. The reserve price for the bid has been set at US$ 2 million per year. Going to a theatre to watch a Twenty20 game is all very well but hearing the commentators yell “That’s a DLF maximum” and “Citi moment of success” in Dolby Digital sound could get trying very quickly.
As sportsmen increasingly find Twitter an excellent way to land themselves in hot water, England’s Graeme Swann and Jimmy Anderson stayed clear of controversy during a Tweet-Off in London’s Covent Garden at the weekend. The pair invited their followers to assemble in central London with the winner being the one with the biggest following.
Swann, with 22,855 followers against Anderson’s 22,950, lost by a short head.
For those interested in what these stars are up to ahead of the South Africa tour, Swann seems to be watching X Factor (“did anyone else notice Whitney 'crack pipe' Houston was high as a kite on x factor?”) while Anderson ... seems to be doing the same ("Didn't like Michael Buble cover of Cry Me A River on X Factor. Not as good as Justin Timberlake's version"). What thrilling lives they lead.
While the ICC works hard to spread the game to all regions of the world, one aspiring cricket body is having a bit of trouble recruiting players from within its natural auspices. Samoan cricket authorities are keen to recruit kirikiti - an indigenous Pacific Island form of cricket - players for their club infrastructure but have found it tough to coax them, because islanders are worried their traditional sport is endangered.
Seb Kohlhase, the Samoa Cricket president, is reportedly in talks with leading kirikiti players who fear the game, which was introduced by missionaries in the 19th century, will be forced into extinction. "They are so used to kirikiti, so they treated us with apprehension as if we would stop them," he told Radio Australia. "I don't want it to stop.
“But we are sending people tomorrow to Savai'i to hold clinics. They will hold development squads for women and Under-19 players, so that finally their cricket and their talent will be recognised, not just for Upolu (the most populated island) but for the whole country."
Kirikiti, unique to Samoa, includes more players and has different rules than cricket, but the two share distinct similarities: they consist of batting and fielding teams who play on a pitch, the bowling is done from either end by different bowlers, and batsmen look to score off deliveries all around the playing space.
Just when the cricket world was debating the ODI’s waning popularity and wondering just who’d watch another seven-match series, the suits at Foster’s, the Australian brewers, have come up with an ace: Foster’s girls. Four of them, clad in fetching blue-and-yellow skirts and with strawberry blonde hair under matching hats, accompanied the drinks on to the field during the India v Australia game at Vadodara on Sunday, doubtless sending temperatures around the stadium soaring even higher. While cheerleaders aren’t new to limited-overs cricket – the recent Champions League had the omnipresent White Mischief team – this is perhaps the first time in an official international bilateral series that the drinks break has been so enlivened. The girls will at the other six games too, which should help ease doubts over thinning attendance and the future of the ODI.
Two victories in different continents on the same night is quite an effort. A few hours before Simon Katich’s New South Wales outplayed Victoria in Delhi, an episode of Celebrity MasterChef featuring Katich aired on Australian TV. And what’s more, Katich was triumphant over his competitors, comedian Wendy Harmer and fashion designer Alex Perry.
Katich first prepared his signature dish, crispy salmon with wilted spinach and mashed potato, and then wowed the judges when he was asked to prepare a restaurant-quality ten-layer crepe cake. His crepes got him over the line and the victory was all the more impressive given that Katich has the disadvantage of having no sense of smell.
"Everyone thinks that not having a sense of smell must hold me back when I'm cooking, and especially when I'm tasting food, but I feel like my palette is no different,” he said. “When I describe a dish it's no different to anyone else. The only problem I have is I don't know when something is burning.”
Katich was taught to cook by his mother and whenever he’s at home he does most of the cooking for himself and his wife Georgie. He now finds himself in the semi-finals of the cooking show, along with Olympic swimmer Eamon Sullivan and INXS band member Kirk Pengilly.
In other television news, Shane Warne has reportedly accepted the role as the new presenter of Top Gear Australia, taking on the Jeremy Clarkson position in the Channel Nine version of the show. Perhaps his baked beans on toast weren't quite up to MasterChef standards.
Though not quite in the league of the legendary Tendulkar-Kambli school partnership, two junior cricketers from Delhi made sure they grabbed headlines when they added 349 for the second wicket in an Under-16 match. The LB Shastri club batsmen Nitish Rana and Siddharth Sehwag hit 185 and 134 respectively in the Delhi & District Cricket Association tournament on Monday.
Rana’s innings consumed 226 balls and included 24 fours, while Sehwag faced 215 balls and hit 23 fours to beat Malik Sports on the basis of a first-innings lead. Rana, 15, was joined at the crease by Sehwag, 14, on the second ball of their side’s innings and forged a mammoth partnership.
"We eat from the same plate … we understand each other enough," Sehwag, the Delhi Under-16 captain, told the Hindustan Times. “We like to bat together.”
Their stand was broken by an act of sportsmanship, something rarely seen by international players. Rana looked set for a double century but walked on 195, even after the umpire ruled him not out. "I knew I was out and I did not want to score a double-century with the feeling that I was out," he said.
Move over ice baths, deep-heat massages and resistance training - the new form of treatment could be "baggy-green therapy". Ask Australia’s opener Phil Jaques, who has turned to his Test cap to help him recover from a third operation to fix a bulging disc in his lower back. Jaques said he would would look at his baggy green in the lead-up to the operation to draw strength from it; post-op, he would look at the bottle-green fabric and national crest before heading off to the gym or pool for more conventional recuperative measures. ''I was really hungry to get back,'' Jaques told The Sydney Morning Herald. ''I'm still desperate to play for Australia again; there was no way I could have gone through everything I did if I didn't have that desire.''
West Indies cricket’s loss has clearly been athletics’ gain. Usain Bolt was said to be a handy cricketer before he concentrated on sprinting and during a charity match on Sunday he proved just how capable he was. Bolt not only struck Chris Gayle for a straight six but, as this Youtube video shows, he went on to bowl Gayle after welcoming him to the crease with a rising bouncer.
Reuters reported that Bolt brought the crowd to their feet when, “taking a long run up and bowling at a respectable pace, [he] had given Gayle a traditional West Indian welcome with his first ball". "I told Chris to watch out I was going to give him one but he didn't really believe it," Bolt said after the game.
Bolt batted with his brother Sadeeki and made 13 but reportedly looked more rusty with the bat than with the ball. His technique even impressed Curtly Ambrose, who was taking part in the match and said he was pleased to see Bolt’s “short and very surprising” opening ball to Gayle.
"I was pretty good as a kid and my cricket coach said I should concentrate on bowling because I was pretty quick running in," Bolt said. "I also used to open the batting for the school team but I haven't batted for a long time. The six was a brilliant feeling though. I shouldn't have got out so early but that six was a brilliant shot."
It’s a run-out waiting to happen. Usain Bolt has agreed to strap on the pads this Sunday and take part in a mini-tournament in Jamaica featuring Chris Gayle and a host of past and present West Indies players. Bolt’s love of cricket is well-known and it’ll be a brave batsman who takes him on in the field for a sneaky single.
"In terms of sport, cricket is my first love," Bolt said. "I grew up watching cricketers like Courtney Walsh take the West Indies to new heights - and I am a big admirer of Chris Gayle for his power batting and calm attitude; he is my favourite player right now. So, to have the chance to play with these guys is a dream come true for me."
The Pro 15/15 cricket tournament will feature current stars including Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Jerome Taylor, as well as legends of the past such as Walsh, Curtly Ambrose and Richie Richardson. You have to pity whoever has to run between the wickets with Bolt. He can cover 100 metres in 9.58 seconds so, ignoring for a moment his carrying pads and bat, a 22-yard pitch should take him approximately two seconds.
There are many uses for a cricket bat, as Daniel Brookes found out when he attempted to rob a house in the village of Alderley Edge in the English county of Cheshire. Thea Taylor, a mother of two, was woken from her sleep in the early hours of the morning by the sound of intruders and grabbed the nearest thing - a bat used in the Ashes and signed by members of the England squad. Wielding the bat like a lightsabre, Taylor chased the intruder out of her house. An alert passerby noted down the getaway vehicles license plates and the perpetrator was duly apprehended by the local authorities.
The bat belonged to Taylor's husband after he bid for it in a charity auction. "I can't remember how much we paid for it but it is definitely now my lucky bat and worth its weight in gold," said Taylor, whose batsmanship so impressed a recorder judge that she issued her a Crown Court Commendation for chasing Brookes out of the house.
Brookes' lawyer was left with little more to say than the choice made by the defendant, when confronted by a lady with a cricket bat, was to run, and not retaliate.
Burglars be forewarned - anyone entering Taylor's house without permission stands to become the subject of a hook shot to the head.
Few could match Sir Donald Bradman’s batting but it looks like his signature - as valuable, in monetary terms, on the auction floor - is far easier to copy. Some signatures of The Don sold by former England cricketer Dermott Reeve, who once owned a memorabilia shop, are under scrutiny by the Bradman Foundation because they are deemed too messy to be genuine. Bradman “was a very careful writer; he had beautiful handwriting”, the Bradman Museum’s marketing manager Joanne Crowley told AFP , so the "messy" signatures are being checked by a leading expert. "This is not about trying to discredit Mr Reeve, it's about trying to protect Sir Donald Bradman's name and intellectual property." Unreliable Bradman memorabilia was becoming prolific, even in shops near the museum in Bowral, Bradman's hometown near Sydney. "It's like a Louis Vuitton handbag or a Gucci wallet - there are knock-offs everywhere," she said.
Buddhism, monasteries and trekking are what you’d associate with Bhutan. And now cricket - Bhutan Post, to commemorate a century of the monarchy, has released four stamps based on cricket. While three feature local players and coaches, one of the stamps has a picture of Roger Binny, the former India cricketer, in situ at his place of work. Binny spent four years in Bhutan from 2004-2008 as the Development Officer of the Asian Cricket Council and was flabbergasted to see his work being committed to perpetuity. “I never knew about something like that,” Binny - now Bengal coach - told Hindustan Times. “It’s a great honour. I cherished the four years I had been there.” The country’s famous Gross National Happiness has just gone up a bit more.
The Buzz brings slices of cricket life ranging from the curious to the obscure; from off-beat to bizarre. Edited by Will Luke, Brydon Coverdale and Jamie Alter
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