Don’t run singles at high altitude. That is the advice of Gareth Lewis, 27, a British policeman who has just played a 20 over-a-side game at Gorak Shep, close to Mount Everest base camp, a staggering 17,000 feet above sea level. “It was difficult to bat and bowl at that height. There were not many singles. Batsmen hit lots of sixes and fours," Lewis said. "I took just six or seven paces to bowl instead of a full run-up."

Lewis was vice-captain of Team Tenzing which lost to Team Hillary by 36 runs on April 21, but he was not disappointed. "It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life," he said.

His team-mate Nick Toovey, 28, shared that feeling. "It was fairly surreal. There was Mount Everest next to you, and yaks on one side of the pitch. I was sad it was all over, I wished it had lasted a bit longer." Jonathan Hill, who umpired the game, had even thought up an excuse for possible poor decisions. "Concentrating was difficult because your brain works slower up there," he said.

It was literally a heady feeling for the two teams and the umpires, doctors and handful of spectators who climbed for nine days carrying their bats, pads and even a roll-up pitch to get to Gorak Shep for the world’s highest cricket match. Next stop? Getting the game registered with Guinness World Records.

The sight of a sibling celebrating your misfortune can be heartbreaking, but what Jacques Kallis had to endure was much worse. Adding to the frustration of being caught off a beautifully executed cover-drive during Bangalore Royal Challengers' loss to Chennai Super Kings, Kallis had to bear the unsettling sight of his sister dancing as he trudged back to his team’s dugout.

"I hit one beautifully but it went straight to cover. A couple of feet either side of him and it was four, so I was feeling pretty fed up," Kallis said. "Then, as I started walking off, I looked around at the scoreboard and there was my sister Janine dancing to celebrate my wicket!"

However, it was all taken in good spirit, as Janine was signed up as a cheerleader for Chennai and just doing what she was expected to. Though Kallis still felt, that she could have made a bit of an exception in his case. "The Bangalore girls actually come from America so there was no chance of Janine being with us. I don't mind really...except she really did seem to be doing her job very well when I was out. She didn't have to look so pleased...!"

The hunt is on for a stolen watch once owned by the legendary 1868 Australian indigenous cricketer Johnny Mullagh, and pawn shop dealers and collectors have been alerted to inform the Geelong police in case thieves try to sell it. The watch was in possession of the family of Charles Lawrence, the organiser of the 1868 tour to England, recognised by Cricket Australia as the first cricket team to represent Australia.

Lawrence’s great great grandson, Ian Friend, kept the watch in a safe in his office in Port Lonsdale, Victoria, from which it was stolen, along with cash. The watch apparently has no commercial value. Mullagh was one of the star players of that tour and the watch was presented to him by the Gentlemen of Sussex. It’s believed that he traded the watch for a trophy because he couldn't read the time.

The mystery of the "fake IPL player" deepens. Kolkata Knight Riders coach Matthew Mott confirmed the anonymous, eponymous blog has been a talking point within the team, although stopped well short of describing the matter as a distraction.

The blogger, whose online following has expanded with each of his 25 entries, insists his work has created a maelstrom within the Knight Riders squad, culminating in a team-wide witch-hunt and a confiscation of laptops. But while admitting to curiosity as to whether the blogger is, as claimed, a member of the team, Mott said the postings were being viewed light-heartedly by the Knight Riders.

"It's a bit of a joke in the squad," Mott told Cricinfo. "There is something going on, but I have only read a bit of one (blog entry) on someone else's laptop, so I can't say whether it's close to the mark or just someone making good guesses. It has been raised but at this stage we're treating it with humour. I'd still be interested to know who it is, though."

Michael Vaughan was at Lord’s the other day. He wasn’t there to play cricket, he was there to promote his art: Vaughan artballs (the verb form of Artballing). Not for him the gentle brushstrokes of Jack Russell, though; his style is less Picasso and more Jackson Pollock. He hits, bowls and throws cricket balls covered in red paint at a blank canvas to create impressions of his trademark shots and moments – the cover drive, the Ashes urn held aloft – with the help of a stencil. His works are going on sale for between £2,000-£30,000 and the proceeds will go to charity.

They’ve done it. They’ve played cricket on Everest. As if the challenge of getting to the highest mountain in the world wasn’t hard enough, the two teams from England also had to get past the red tape from the local authorities. But they finally accomplished their dream of setting a high-altitude record for field sports by playing Twenty20 cricket at Gorakshep, which is 16,940 feet above sea level. The record, however, still needs to be ratified by Guinness World Records, which reportedly does not have an entry for field sport at a highest altitude.

For the record, Team Hillary defeated team Tenzing.

	© The White House

George Bush tried – and failed – to swat a tennis ball with a cricket bat on a trip to Pakistan in the dog days of his presidency, but the meeting between Brian Lara and President Barack Obama in Trinidad was an altogether more successful affair.

Obama took time out from attending the Fifth Summit of the Americas to meet with Trinidad’s most famous cricketer. While his sport of choice is basketball, Obama was given a brief batting lesson by Lara, although attempts to teach him to drive were slightly less successful that his lesson in playing the forward defensive.

Obama greeted Lara by saying that he “always wanted to meet the Michael Jordan of cricket”. Lara repaid the compliment by presenting the president with a signed bat.

“It was beautiful,” gushed hotel manager Ali Khan. “You could see the expression on [Obama’s] face and his daughter’s. He was truly emotional and touched as were all of us.”

Things just aren’t going right for the Kolkata Knight Riders. After the captaincy controversy and a disastrous first game, they now have to deal with bouncers and googlies of a different kind - the writing of a mystery blogger, who claims to be a member of the team and seems determined to out every team secret, warts and all. The jury’s out on the blogger’s identity – he blogs as ‘Fake IPL Player’ - but the writing indicates a keen knowledge of the team’s working and the typical daily grind of an overseas tour. Few players are named but the nicknames are unambiguous – the blogger’s “team-mates’ include a former India allrounder called Kaan Moolo, an opener called Calypso King, a former captain in Lord Almighty and an opening bowler called Little John. The other characters include a team-owner called Mr Batlivala, a team coach/captain called the Sheikh of Tweak and a TV commentator called Kishen Kanhaiyya.

The posts describe what the blogger claims are team meetings, arguments between coach and team members, post-match parties and pre-match strategy. Hours before KKR’s first game he wrote that “Skipper” would open with “Calypso King” and Lord Almighty would come in one down. For the record, McCullum and Gayle opened with Ganguly coming in one drop. His prediction for Tuesday’s game? Skipper won’t keep and either the Bangla Tiger (a fast bowler) or the spinner Junta Tormentor will beef up the bowling. And Fake IPL Player? He says the team management - which, in an official reaction, called it "poison pen writing of the dirtiest variety" - has vowed to out him in 24 hours.

Reports of the IPL’s dwindling popularity in Season 2 are grossly untrue - just ask the prisoners in Kolkata’s Alipore Central Jail, who have gone on a hunger strike in protest against not being allowed to watch the tournament. The protest by the 500 prisoners began after guards rejected their demands, on the grounds that the matches are being broadcast on a private channel - security concerns allow only state-run television to be shown in Indian jails. In the gloom there is good news, though: The prisoners can count themselves lucky they missed Kolkata Knight Riders’ abysmal performance on Sunday. And as for the IPL suits, they now know whom to tap if the ratings fall.

Cricket is likely to make the pages of OK and Hello is the coming weeks after the revelation that Chelsy Davy, former partner of Prince Harry, has been “spending time” with South Africa’s captain Graeme Smith.

As often happens, Davy seems to be strikingly similar to Smith’s previous high-profile girlfriend, the model Minki van der Westhuizen. "Chelsy is so like Minki and they have the same friends in South Africa. Chelsy and Graeme have been to the Bang Bang club together twice and she has had Graeme over at her apartment. They are extremely close," reported the Daily Mail. "Chelsy is still very fond of Harry but she can't go on waiting for ever.”

Should anyone be concerned about the heir to the crown, he too is said to have moved on and is being linked to “glamourous TV presenter Caroline Flack”, so the paper says.

	Footloose: Morne Morkel © Getty Images

It was literally a case of stepping into another's shoes for South African fast bowler Morne Morkel. He had to train in teammate Makhaya Ntini’s shoes on the eve of the fifth ODI against Australia after a bag containing all his equipment disappeared from the team hotel at Fourways in Johannesburg.

The bag, with three pairs of Puma bowling shoes, all his batting accessories and one-day clothing was tracked down in Cape Town on Thursday afternoon. “One moment my bag was still in the hotel lobby and the next it was nowhere to be found,” Morkel told News24.com. “One of the hotel workers had been spotted with it and somehow it landed on the same bus as the baggage for the Deccan Chargers.”

Clearly Morkel, who lost his place in the side to Wayne Parnell earlier this month, can't wait to hit the ground running - in his own footwear!

The IPL is clearly making its presence felt in South Africa, sometimes in unconventional ways, as a local businessman found out to his utter surprise. When Stephen Blewett checked into his hotel room in Port Elizabeth, he found a stash of R450,000 in the locker. It emerged that the room had been previously used by the Kings XI Punjab team, which had camped in the city to train. The money was meant to cover day-to-day expenses. "It is not common for us to carry that amount of money but we have a lot of costs and the money was not yet distributed to the players," the team's liaison officer, Arvinder Singh, told the Times. For a country that normally attracts negative headlines over crime rates, this was a refreshing change indeed.

The best thing that happened to the Rajasthan Royals, the inaugural IPL champions, might have occurred by chance. They never intended to buy Shane Warne at the auction but ended up with him because he was the first player on sale - or so say the authors of an upcoming book 'IPL - an inside story'.

The book has what it says is an eye-witness account of the first auction by the CEO of a franchise. "Warne's was the first name that came up as the 78 players' names were picked up. But no one was willing to pick him up at the reserve price. The auction was headed for disaster within the first few minutes.

"Since [Lalit] Modi has some interest in the Jaipur team, he made eye contact with [Manoj] Badale and Co. and nudged them to start bidding. Jaipur raised the placard, hoping other teams would jump into the fray. But no other team bid for Warne. Jaipur, it seemed, was saddled with Warne." Less than four months later Jaipur had the last laugh, and the others were left looking foolish, as Warne reinvented himself with spectacular success.

Question: Who are the current Olympic silver medalists in cricket? Answer: France, and they want a re-match against England, who won gold at the Paris Games in 1900. France Cricket, the governing body for the sport in the country, is preparing to issue a challenge to England – a return game in Lille ahead of the London Olympics in 2012.

"It would be a one-day game," Maxime Parent, spokesman for France Cricket, told the Independent "I don't think that the French public is quite ready yet for a Test match stretching over five days. Perhaps, one day, who knows? Cricket is advancing quickly in France but it needs a match like this to capture the imagination of the public. France v England is always a big event in France, whatever the sport."

Cricket in France has come a fair way since it was banned as an "alien" sport in 1940 by the Vichy government. There are now ten clubs in France’s super-league and about one-third of its players are French. It might have been very different if the MCC had gone ahead with its first foreign tour – to France – in 1789. They had to cancel because of the French revolution.

It's good to know that the prevalence and strength of red tape isn't affected by altitude. The British group that was flying, driving and trekking for 11 days to play cricket on Mount Everest – see the Buzz entry two blogs ago – has been turned away by Nepalese conservation officials.

They were aiming to play a Twenty20 match more than three miles above sea level in what would be the highest altitude recorded for an organised field sport. But the touring party has been refused access to the Sagarmatha National Park and was told nobody was allowed to play cricket inside the protected area.

It seems the Brits have been caught in the middle of a power struggle between the Minister for Forest and Land Conservation, who said they could play, and the national park’s management, which said they couldn’t. The match was due to go ahead next week, which means the players have a few days to try and sort out the bungle.

As if climbing Mount Everest isn't hard enough. The whole fiasco must feel a little like being stranded on 99.

The celebrity quotient during the opening ceremony of the inaugural IPL may have been provided by biggies from Bollywood but the tournament's shift to South Africa could lend it an international flavour this time around.

Reports suggest Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman - who are working on the Human Factor, a film on how Nelson Mandela used the 1995 rugby World Cup win to help heal post-apartheid race relations - are among the headliners at this year’s ceremony. If true, one of the organisers’ tasks will be to stop them from doing a Groucho Marx (asking “When does the game itself begin?” while watching the match). Pop star George Michael and alternative rock band Snow Patrol are other names being bandied about - though curiously no mention has been made of cricket's biggest rockstar fans, Mick Jagger and his fellow Rolling Stones. Ah well, you can't always get what you want...

How far would you go to play cricket? A group of 50 people set out from Lord’s on Friday to play a Twenty20 match on Mount Everest in the Himalayas, the Times reported. They’ll get to their venue, a frozen lake near an Everest base camp called Gorak Shep (“dead raven” in the Sherpas' language), after 11 days of flying, driving and trekking to reach a plateau more than three miles above sea level - the highest altitude recorded for a field sport.

The teams – appropriately named Hillary and Tenzing – will use wooden stumps and bats, a pink leather ball, and an artificial pitch. The thin air is expected to make the player’s hearts beat 30% faster than usual and after their efforts they will take a proper British cricket tea and raise the Union Jack in the Queen’s honour. And oh, the game is being played for charity, with over £250,000 expected to be raised for the Himalayan Trust and the Lord's Taverners.

Spectators are going to be allowed to wear fancy dress at Lord’s for the first time ever during the World Twenty20 in June and some of the MCC members are not happy about it. Lord’s will relax its strict regulations on attire, in effect since the 18th century, and will join other fancy-dress friendly venues such as the Oval, Trent Bridge and Taunton.

“The Aussie guys can come with yellow wigs, the South Africans can come dressed all in green,” Steve Elworthy, the tournament director, told the Times. “We want to encourage that and we want people to have fun. If they come in a costume, that will be allowed.”

The move is aimed at attracting a younger audience and some of the old timers are bristling. “It's bloody ridiculous,” said Len Osborn, 83 and a member of MCC for more than 30 years. “They will lower the tone of the place.” He need not worry though, for once the World Twenty20 is over, Lord’s will once again not permit pirates, super heroes and fairy-tale characters through its gates.

Snooker has been one of sport's more traditional games, which is perhaps why it's taken the cue from another traditional sport to reinvent itself. Impressed by the success of cricket's Twenty20 format, World Snooker chairman Rodney Walker is adapting the principles to draw new fans to the green baize tables. Outlining his plans in the Guardian he said the new format - tentatively dubbed 'Super6s' - would feature balls of only six colours (as opposed to eight), with games intended to last an average of six or seven minutes.

The game is due to be trialled at this month's World Championships in Sheffield with a ‘Legends v Rising Stars’ tournament.

"As an observer of snooker you cannot churn out the same diet year after year,” Walker said. “Look at what Twenty20 has done for cricket. It has brought in a whole new audience so what we have in mind we think would be appealing to a younger audience.”

The 1980’s film Arthur’s Hallowed Ground tells the story of a possessive curator who has tended the same school cricket field for half a century and strives to bring to fruition his idea of a perfect pitch, against the wishes of his seniors who want him to create a track which suits the struggling home team. Auckland businessman Derek Evennett faces no such obstacles, for he owns the Coatesville Cricket Ground, the realisation of his own ambition to create the ideal cricketing venue.

Bought at a price of NZ$1.06 million, the ground was built to international specifications, with 70-metre boundaries, and has played host to several club and school-level matches. However, Evennett, who has spent a lifetime playing and umpiring the game around the world, has regrettably stopped short of taking the next step – building a pavilion. He has instead put it up on sale, hoping for another “fanatic” to step in and complete the task. Arthur didn’t own his ground but his devotion to it imbued him with a sense of ownership. Evennett, on the other hand, has opted to relinquish his own prized possession and left his dream incomplete.

Jesse Ryder has a new weapon with which to attack the Indian bowlers but he isn’t planning on using it just yet. His new sponsor Gray-Nicolls gave Ryder a double-sided bat and some space-age helmets on Wednesday, the Dominion Post reported.

The bats, according to Gray-Nicolls' Cameron Black, “created quite a storm” in Australia after David Warner hit Shaun Tait on to the roof of an Adelaide Oval grandstand. Ryder, however, wasn’t so keen and did not plan to bat with it just yet. “I'm not the best player to be reverse-sweeping, so I don't practise it,” he said. “But I'll give it a go in the nets and see how it goes."

	The Mekong Cricket Ground? © Getty Images

If the ICC is keen to expand into the Chinese market this might be a good start. According to a report on the Herald Sun website the Melbourne Cricket Ground was to be rebranded the Mekong Cricket Ground “following an audacious naming rights bid by a Chinese construction giant”.

After Melbourne’s other major stadium, the Docklands ground, was renamed Etihad Stadium earlier this year the new MCG moniker was just a bit too much for the patriotic pride of some readers. More than 200 comments had been posted on the story by midday Melbourne time.

More than 200 people submitted feedback to the newspaper’s website. "Let's just give up this whole country to the Asians and be done with it," posted "Mister Master. "What did our diggers fight and die for in the past wars?” he continued, ignoring the minor fact that the Chinese were actually on the Allies' side.

Other readers were alert to the fact that it was April Fool’s Day. It might have helped that the paper quoted a spokeswoman going by the name April Fulton.