Players leave tours for plenty of reasons, a common one being the birth of a child, but Kevin Pietersen had a novel one for wanting to leave the Caribbean during the Test series against West Indies. The Sunday Telegraph reported that Pietersen had asked for permission to return home between the third and fourth Tests in order to watch his wife Jessica Taylor, a former Liberty X singer, take part in the television show Dancing on Ice.

He only wanted to go home for 48 hours but his request was refused by the team management. “It was deemed best that he stayed on tour,” said an ECB spokesman. Perhaps it contributed to Pietersen being at the “end of his tether” by the time the ODIs arrived.

Don Bradman seemingly knew everything about Australian cricket during decades as a player, administrator, selector and national hero, but he had no idea about the value of his surname. The issue has been discussed in the Supreme Court, with Bradman’s son John suing a law firm for using his father’s eight-letter moniker as "a brand name, like Mickey Mouse".

"He said that he really had no idea that his name would have the commercial value, which it apparently has, and agreed that a fair benefit should flow to the family," the Australian reported John Bradman writing to the firm in 1998. "He also said that while he can contain the use of his name during his lifetime, after his death he would like the family to have a fair say in its use."

It’s only natural for millions of Indians to feel upset about moving the IPL out of India, and it seemed only a matter of time before someone took action. Rather surprisingly, the All India Karate Federation was so irked by the move that they have gone to the extent of filing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Rajasthan High Court. The petition, filed by its president Rameshwar Nirvan, said it was a national shame to shift the tournament and that it only exposes the incompetence of the government in providing security. It added that the general elections shouldn’t disrupt all other activities in the country. By taking the legal route, the karate men have shown they can use non-violent methods to fight for a cause.

Exchange of bodily fluids be damned, Craig McMillan will replace Ravi Shastri in the commentary box for the Napier Test. Despite the Indian board’s numerous attempts to resist any contact with any member of the banned Indian Cricket League (ICL), it looks like this one is unavoidable.

Former New Zealand batsman McMillan, who captained the Kolkata Tigers in the ICL’s first season, was set to be part of Sky TVs commentary panel for the second Test between India and New Zealand. Sky had been warned that using McMillan would upset Sony Entertainment, which holds the rights for all cricket televised out of New Zealand.

Niranjan Shah, who was India’s tour manager for the one-day series, issued a veiled threat just before he left New Zealand saying, “As far as we are concerned, any commentator or anyone involved with an unauthorised tournament declared by the BCCI, our people will not take part in it.” Shah’s statements caused much furore in the New Zealand media with him being labelled as a ‘travelling goon’.

But Sky TV have decided to go ahead with McMillan. Sky's acting executive producer for cricket James Cameron said he did not believe Sky should be "dictated to" about who should be part of their commentary panel. Who would have guessed that Shastri’s decision to return for a birthday party in India during the Napier Test would cause such a stir?

Following on from being named Guyana's sport personality of 2008, Shivnarine Chanderpaul has again been shown the love of his countrymen by having a street named after him in Georgetown.

	Shivnarine Chanderpaul Drive (see map) © Google / DigitalGlobe

Last night, New Garden Street - just outside Bourda Cricket Ground - was renamed Shivnarine Chanderpaul Drive in honour of their favourite son. "He is an outstanding son of the soil and he has done us proud," said Hamilton Green, the mayor of Georgetown. "He is recognised all over the world as an outstanding cricketer and we in Guyana are truly proud of him."

It's a good job the mayor didn't decide to make mention of some of Chanderpaul's eccentricities at the crease, choosing instead to name it a "drive." Though there is still time for a fish restaurant - The Chanderpaul Crab - to be opened in honour of his awkward, yet remarkably effective stance.

The recession spares no one. That’s what three of India’s rising young players learnt ... the hard way.

On Wednesday evening, Saurashtra batsman Cheteshwar Pujara, Mumbai spinner Iqbal Abdulla and Gujarat batsman Bhavik Thaker were going to the airport after their West Zone team won the Deodhar Trophy tournament. But euphoria soon turned to fear as their car was blocked and stopped by two men on a motorcycle on the Cuttack-Bhubaneshwar highway. One of the men got into the car and started driving while the players were still in the car. The players feared the worst, but the situation turned out to be slightly different.

Pressed for answers, the men said they were recovery agents repossessing the car because the owner had turned defaulter. Sensing a glimmer of hope, the players hastily explained that they had nothing to do with the owner of the vehicle, and were in fact unsuspecting cricketers caught in a mess that wasn’t of their making. Following a 15-minute discussion, the men finally relented and dropped the players, with bag and baggage, on the highway. Another car was summoned from the Orissa Cricket Association and the players reached the airport, without further incident.

Th end result? A blacklisted travel agent and a dose of ‘economic’ reality for three young Indian aspirants.

	Shaun Marsh and Manny Ramirez take guard in Arizona © AP

It wasn't the same as when Babe Ruth met Don Bradman, or Shane Warne showed Michael Jordan his flipper, but Shaun Marsh has traded tips with the baseballer Manny Ramirez in Arizona. Marsh, the Australian one-day international, showed Ramirez, the LA Dodgers and former Boston Red Sox slugger, some of things needed to succeed as a batsman in the game Robin Williams called baseball on valium (see video).

"I have faced some tough pitchers before, but we don't have to ever swing at a bouncing ball that is rising as it passes us," Ramirez said after his short innings at the Arizona Cricket Club. "Shaun is a great hitter and he gave me some great pointers.” Marsh was impressed after his short coaching clinic and said “maybe he can return the favour next spring”.

There are a few similarities for Marsh and Ramirez: they are capable of launching balls out of stadiums and are both out with hamstring problems. The major difference between the pair is Ramirez has just signed a two-year contract with the Dodgers worth US$45m, dwarfing the US$30,000 Marsh earned playing for King’s XI Punjab in the inaugural Indian Premier League.

The television channel Directv, which will show the upcoming IPL in the United States, organised the get-together. Back in 1932 Bradman chatted to Ruth at a New York Yankees-White Sox game and in 1994 Warne caught up with Jordan.

Giles Clarke, the ECB chairman, has been subjected to further embarrassment after an email intended for him from Nigel Hilliard, the Essex chairman, was instead sent straight to the inbox of his most outspoken opponent, Leicestershire's Neil Davidson. The subject of the email? Advice on how to deal with Davidson's threat of legal action after Clarke's particularly forthright opinions in the media.

Speaking to the The Independent, Clarke variously described Davidson and his fellow critic, Rod Bransgrove of Hampshire, as “two men with a megaphone”, “flawed individuals” and “useless people who couldn't run a piss-up in a brewery.”

Davidson, in an email response that has been circulated around the counties, wrote: “The statements which you have made about me are offensive and totally without foundation. I am considering the best way to proceed given that what you said about me is clearly actionable and totally unbecoming of the chairman of the ECB.”

The situation was then compounded when Clarke, seeking advice on how to proceed, contacted Hilliard, who inadvertently sent his reply straight to Davidson.

Hilliard wrote: “Suggest you reply that you will bring the matter to the next ECB Board meeting. We might then slap your wrist and tell you carry on the good work. At the same time we might also suggest Davidson and Bransgrove keep quiet and let the chairman, who has just been elected by a landslide, get on with the job.”

Speaking to Cricinfo, Davidson confirmed the farcical chain of events. “I can certainly confirm that Hilliard sent an email to me that he thought he’d sent to Clarke,” he said. “I actually get on pretty well with Nigel, and he rang me to say: ‘Err, you shouldn’t have seen that.’”

“Nevertheless, the email is indicative of the closed-shop mentality that is surrounding Giles and keeping him in power,” said Davidson. “Looking at the polls run in the national newspapers at the height of the Stanford debacle, 85% said that Giles should go. It is very straightforward, the majority of county chairmen are not in touch with public opinion, and as the custodians of the national game, I think that is unsustainable.”

On the original content of Clarke’s interview, Davidson said: “I am advised that his comments are actionable, although I’m not sure that’s a course of action I want to take. But it also depends on Giles Clarke’s reaction. I didn’t put my email to Clarke in the public domain, I don’t know who has. I was dealing with this behind closed doors.”

A report in the Wisden Cricketer magazine says that India’s coaches are becoming increasingly worried by parents buying their children cheap but heavy bats because they last longer. The net result is that children are using equipment too big and weighty for them, with the result that they are suffering injuries and acquiring dodgy techniques.

“If [a parent] buys a bat he knows the boy is going to grow taller, so he buys a bat that is at least one size bigger than what suits him,” said coach Sandeep Dahyad.

With bats made from English willow lighter but more expensive than their Kashmiri counterparts, it is the latter which many go for because of price and durability.

The report also quotes Dr Rene Ferninands, a Australian bio-mechanist, who said that the heavy bats cause serious technical problems as the children “don’t have the top-arm strength to hit the ball … hence they lift with the bottom hand and find it difficult to play straight. And what about the cut and the pull shots? What happens to them?”

When the wives and girlfriends joined the touring squad in Cape Town over the weekend, most of the Australian players indulged in a bit of romantic sightseeing or some retail therapy. If the men were holding bags they were likely Prada or Louis Vuitton. Not so for Mitchell Johnson.

His girlfriend Jessica Bratich enjoys a bit of fashion, as she revealed at the Allan Border Medal, but she also happens to be a karate champion. While he was enjoying a break from Test cricket this week, Johnson found himself holding a punching bag for Bratich and things got a little dangerous for Australia’s key bowler.

“She actually did punch me in the gut yesterday,” Johnson said on Monday. “She was doing 30 punches really quickly and as she was getting a bit slower she hit me in the gut. I might have said something, I don’t know.

“She’s looking to go to the world titles next year in Serbia. She’s got a few tournaments this year. I think there’s one in India as well. It’s a funny thing, she’s wanted to come to India with me on a few occasions but hasn’t had the chance so I think she’d enjoy it.”

At least Johnson could laugh about his hit to the stomach. There wasn’t a smile on Michael Clarke’s face on Monday when he took a ball to the, ah, midriff during Australia’s net session at Newlands and went down like a sack of particularly tender potatoes.

Perhaps Johnson and Clarke can have a debate about whether it’s more embarrassing to be felled by your girlfriend or by a bowling machine. Feeding the balls into the machine was none other than Steve Bernard, the former first-class fast bowler who is now Australia’s team manager. It seems that “Brute” Bernard is still living up to his nickname.

Attendances for county games may continue to be low, but there’s no denying that there are still some die-hard fans. One of them, Keith Howard, has donated ₤300,000 (about US$427,000) to Yorkshire, the county with the most success in the Championship, towards building a museum to showcase the club’s 146-year history.

The museum will be in the East Stand at Headingley, and work is due to start next summer. Design firm Mather & Co, who have helped with museums of some of England’s biggest sporting institutions including Wimbledon, Manchester United and Arsenal football club, have been appointed to oversee the project.

The museum is to have interactive displays detailing the club’s history, a theatre, and will also house the club’s archives. Perhaps it will help us learn how a non-Yorkshireman like Lord Hawke overcame the county’s almost-fanatical refusal to field any player born outside Yorkshire to become its captain for 28 years.

Cricket tours are hectic, with weeks passing by in a blur of venues, hotels and airports. So when you get a chance to unwind, you take it. The Indians did precisely that on the eve of the fifth ODI in Auckland. Having already won the series, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Paddy Upton, India’s mental conditioning coach, headed out for a deep-sea fishing trip. Rahul Dravid went with them. Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh and some others chose a walk in the sky at the City Sky tower while Zaheer Khan attempted to climb the harbour bridge. Coach Gary Kirsten, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Ishant Sharma, Amit Mishra, Gautam Gambhir and Munaf Patel settled for the more laid-back entertainment provided by a dolphin and whale safari.

	© Daily Express

The Daily Express in London reports that supporters in Delhi commissioned artists to create icons of Tendulkar as the monkey god Hanuman. The works show him holding a bat instead of the more traditional mace.

“He is truly a god to millions of people who worship this sport,” explained artist Gautam Bhatia.

	Peter Siddle used to do the yelling from the crowd, now he's being heckled himself © Getty Images

Peter Siddle is learning that what goes around comes around. Ten years ago he used to sit at the MCG and join in the nasty chants about opposition players. Now he’s on the receiving end. “Siddle’s a wanker” has become something of a series catchphrase in South Africa. The fans would never admit it but it’s a perverse mark of respect.

Richard Hadlee was the target of similar jeers in Australia during the 1980s and Siddle recalls handing out the same treatment to Courtney Walsh. There was a fitting symmetry when Siddle ran in to the rhythm of the chants in South Africa; Walsh was watching on from the commentary box.

“It is a bit weird. I was always watching the Test matches where they were getting into Warney or Merv Hughes,” Siddle said. “I remember actually going to the Boxing Day Test and even joining in when they were getting into whatever player. It might be Courtney Walsh or anyone down on the boundary there in bay 13, getting into them.

“It is sort of weird actually being out on the field and there's chanting and they are getting into you. I was thinking, ten years ago I was doing the same thing. It has been fun and interesting and it's just something I've got to deal with I guess.”

Siddle has become something of a cult figure in South Africa, where one particular newspaper is obsessed with his so-called “man boobs”. Man boobs, muscle, what’s the difference. It’s splitting hairs. As long as he realises the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

The European Court has ruled that a tennis racquet is not a terrorist threat, despite an airline deciding it was and throwing a passenger off a flight for the temerity of bringing one on board.

It emerged that while the EU had a list of banned hand luggage, it was actually secret for “security reasons”. The court's decision was based on that fact … how could anyone know what was allowed if the airlines and airport operators wouldn’t tell them?

The most that anyone could gather was that "any blunt instrument capable of causing injury" was prohibited. So what about cricket bats? Easyjet have ruled that they must be carried in the hold (as with fishing rods and snooker cues) while British Airways allows “bats, wickets, pads and balls” but, again, in the hold only. It’s the same in the USA, although, bizarrely, metal scissors with pointed tips under four inches in length are not deemed unsuitable to carry on.

In short, if you are travelling, out the cricket bat inside luggage in the hold (if it’s outside the luggage it may count as a separate item and attract a surcharge.

The absurdity of the anomalies was best brought home by the man allowed to bring a mini chainsaw onto a domestic flight in New Zealand because it was not on a list of banned items. Only when petrol from it began leaking from an overhead locker over passengers was it removed.

The idea of owning your own cricket club might not cost you as much as the many millions of dollars paid for IPL franchises. For a mere £20 million or so, you can buy not only a quintessentially English village club but the entire village as well.

	Linkenholt is up for sale © David Hartley / Daily Mail

Linkenholt, near Andover in Hampshire, is going under the hammer later this week, and included in the sale are 22 cottages, a shop, a commercial shoot as well as almost 2000 acres of land.

The cricket pitch and pavilion, which doubles as the village hall, is one of the main attractions and is described as being “set in an idyllic ground in the north Hampshire downs, the club combines beautiful countryside with good, competitive cricket”.

Texan billionaires need not apply.

	Colin Cowdrey - a cricketing gentleman © Getty Images

Major, who loves the game and was the former president of the Surrey County Cricket Club, said he had jotted down poems throughout his seven-year stint at Downing Street. "They were about cricket subjects and about politics and about characters,” Major was quoted as saying in the Telegraph. “With some of my political poems it is probably best they are never seen in public! But in the case of Colin I am pleased to share it. We were very close friends and used to get together for whiskies almost on a weekly basis." A total of 307 copies are being auctioned because the figure was Cowdrey’s highest total. The poem is reproduced below:

The mellow sound of bat on ball
The wherewithal to enthral
On feather bed or fiery track
Talent far above the pack
All on display at a glance
As Colin Cowdrey took his stance.
His style was gentle, full of grace
Delicate as Flemish lace
When a troubling ball came down
Fair caressed it all around
Some were hit, a few let pass
In Cowdrey's cricketing master-class.
With speed or spin, sharp eyes could see
The blade of grass where the ball would be
And to follow - swift and sure
A stroke to excite the connoisseur
Such memories still linger on
So long after the day has gone.
Firm wrists to coax the ball away
To all parts of close of play
A push for one, sometimes a pair
Three for a cut to backward of square
And - hear the full-throated roar -
A dazzling cover drive for four.
Now, he out; no more shall we see
That brand of Cowdrey Mastery
A style so easy, so unhurried
So very English, so unflurried
The master with a Corinthian touch
To Whom victory matter - but not that much.

	Security and maintenance personnel try to break down the restroom door at the Kensington Oval © The Nation

Then Wayne Daniel, not the West Indies fast bowler but a reporter with the Atlanta-based Carib Voice, found himself unable to get out of the women’s washroom that he had entered after finding the men’s room locked. The rescue team assembled once again and this time a crowbar and some well-aimed kicks did the trick. The Oval’s maintenance manager said the two locks had malfunctioned due to ‘wear and tear’ and not because of lack of maintenance. Just how many people had to struggle to hold on as the rescue team grappled with the door?

Has the first potshot of the Ashes been fired? News just in: Cricket could have been imported in to England from northern Europe. This could be a bigger blow to England’s campaign than the chance of Andrew Flintoff missing the entire series. If a researcher from the Australian National University’s department of English and theatre is to be believed, a poem written in 1553, attributed to John Skelton, refers to Flemish weavers, who settled in southern and eastern England in the 14th century, as “kings of crekettes”.

Paul Campbell discovered the reference in the poem ‘The Image of Ipocrisie’ while searching for variations of the ways in which the word cricket was spelt back then. He was aided by German academic Dr Heiner Gillmeister, who first established that ‘cricket’ had its linguistic origins in Flemish. “It could be the earliest known reference to the game which we know as cricket,” Gillmeister was quoted as saying in the Sunday Telegraph. "Of course there is something quite ironic about a German and an Australian making discoveries about what is considered to be such an English game, and in reality that game being a foreign import."

The lines of the poem believed to lend solid proof to the import theory are:

"O lorde of Ipocrites/Nowe shut vpp your wickettes/And clape to your clickettes!/A! Farewell, kings of crekettes!"

	Australia's Sarah Andrews backs up during the game on the Gold Coast © Cricket Australia

Beach cricket in summer is as Australian as winning World Cups.

Matthew Hayden ensured the men’s team made it three in a row in 2007 and the women’s side will attempt back-to-back successes when the 2009 global tournament begins in New South Wales on Saturday.

Hayden donned the board shorts and joined the Australian stars Ellyse Perry, Alex Blackwell, Delissa Kimmince and Sarah Andrews in a beach game at Snapper Rocks on the Gold Coast, where the Roxy Pro surfing event is about to be held.

The opposition was some of the world’s best on the waves, including Layne Beachley, the seven-times world champion, Steph Gilmore, Jessi Miley-Dyer, Sally Fitzgibbons and Sam Cornish.

Over the next week things will get more serious for the cricketers. Their first match of the World Cup is on Sunday against New Zealand.