Great cricketers we have known: Paul Allott

To help with our coverage of the Under-19 World Cup, we dispatched a special correspondent, who we call 'dad'.

'Dad' neglected to find out the start time of the final, so when he bumped into Paul Allott in a supermarket in Colombo, he asked him. Paul Allott told him and everyone lived happily ever after.

Paul Allott was a middling international cricketer, but he's from really close to where we're from, so we like him. When we're with people who are from the same place as us, we like people from as far away as possible. When we're with foreigners or we're on the internet, we like people from home. We're a bit mental like that.

King Cricket - new rating system explained

After going throught the emotional mincer over the weekend, we have decided to simplify things. From now on, we will be either 'angry' or 'amazed' at every cricketing event. There are no other options.

The credit for this complex rating system should go to the UK's Channel 4. During David Blaine's interminable stunt where he hung in a box over the Thames, viewers were asked to vote through their remote control as to how they felt about it. The options were (a) angry or (b) amazed.

We tried to hammer in 'nonplussed' in the form of binary code, but only succeeding in switching to BBC1 which was pretty much the best result we could have hoped for.

Hopefully we'll have more success applying this system to cricket.

Tip: Sakib al Hasan/Shakib al Hasan/Saqibul Hasan

Sakib Al Hasan is representing the Bangladesh under-19s at the moment. He's 16 (or 18 - it's never simple) and he's a left-handed, top order batsman and left arm spinner. He was out for 20 off 16 balls against Uganda under-19s this morning, so this isn't the most timely of tips, but he is good. Really good.

He got the top four Pakistan batsmen out in Bangladesh's first match of the Under-19 World Cup. He also took 3-39 and then scored 100 off 86 balls against Sri Lanka in the final of an under-19 tri-nation tournament before Christmas.

He's also helping the under-19s in their bid to field at least three Hasans in every match they play.

- As a footnote to this, we do now know what Sakib looks like because we found a picture on cricinfo. We were going to steal it, but the warnings about stealing it are a little bit too clear, so instead we're going to make do with pointing out that cricinfo think that he's a medium-fast bowler when he isn't.

Click here to laugh heartily at cricinfo and their poor research/airtight legal warnings about image theft.

King Cricket's other tips.