Monty Panesar picked for England

Hooray. Monty Panesar is in. Please let him stay.

Here's what we propose:
- Monty Panesar and Ian Blackwell are confirmed as England's spinners for the long-term future and England stick with them and DON'T get their heads turned by some new young thing next year.
- Both work closely with England's new spin bowling coach, David Parsons as well as specialist batting coaches.
- England stop picking Shaun Udal.

We know we're right. So do you.

Here's what will actually happen:
- Shaun Udal will play every Test in India, failing to take a wicket.
- Monty Panesar will be dropped. His batting ability will be cited as the reason.
- Gareth Batty will be reinstated for the next sub-continental tour.
- Monty Panesar will continue to outstrip all of his rivals as a bowler and a batsman, but nobody will notice until he's 33.
- Monty Panesar will be picked for England at the age of 33, keeping a young spinner who can't bat out of the side.

He wants to learn to bat. Teach him to bat. You're the experts.

We're going away for a week really. We just got a bit heated about the mistreatment of Monty Panesar that happened in our mind.

Everybody in the world of cricket, stop what you're doing

Bad news everybody. We're away for a week.

If all cricketing activity halts for the next seven days, hopefully no-one will come to any harm.

We know that we're like a drug and that you lot can't get enough of our leather and willow goodness, but you'll have to try and get by with the BBC website or something. Sorry.

When we come back, you can look forward to our covering the Under-19 World Cup with particular attention being paid to Bangladesh's side.

Last time around Bangladesh won the 'plate' element of the tournament, which is basically the trophy for the crap teams who got knocked out early on. This time we've got higher hopes for the lads.

With a bit of luck, Bangladesh's team will have come on in leaps and bounds and will win the tournament proper. We will then consider this to be evidence that we're right about Bangladesh and proper journalists are wrong.

Following this revelation, someone - we're not sure who - will throw holdalls stuffed with money at us.

To amuse you until we get back we've included a picture of Steve Harmison with a very big bat under a grey sky. We've never managed to think of anything funny to write about this and we're hoping the picture just speaks for itself.

Great names in cricket

Current players, without a great deal of research:



3: Aaron Laraman. Sounds like a cricketing superhero.









2: Wavell Hinds. Curtly Ambrose was named after James Kirtley's granddad. What's your excuse Wavell?









1: Chaminda Vaas. Or should we say Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas?

As we said. We haven't really thought about this a great deal. Maybe this will rouse you all from your apathy.

Comment below or e-mail us at blueandbrown@bluebottle.com with your suggestions.

Hands up who hasn't scored a hundred

Anyone? Anyone? Who's that? Zaheer Khan.

As Pakistan and India's match idles to another stultifying, run-strewn stalemate, we treat fans of both nations to two photographs of wickets. Look how happy everyone is. That's what it's like when a wicket falls and it matters.

There have been 12 separate hundreds in the first two matches of this Test series, including a double and two near misses from Younis Khan.

In the first two matches of the Ashes, which were GOOD and FUN and had RESULTS. There were no hundreds.

Hit as many sixes as you like lads. You're only devaluing the hundred.

Weekend round-up

We didn’t cover any news over the weekend because we were far too busy having nothing to do.





Sanath Jayasuriya produced an upward blip in what has been a fairly dismal closing chapter in his spectacular career by producing an entirely unexpected hundred against Australia at quicker than a run a ball.

We think that Sanath Jayasuriya has the look of a jovial uncle.





Rahul Dravid made a mockery of experts who claimed that opening the batting and captaining the side was too much for poor Michael Vaughan. Dravid has produced his second successive hundred as a makeshift opener, whilst captaining India in a series against Pakistan. Top that for pressure.

Once again the pitch has been flatter than an ironed bowling green and runs have been scored aplenty, but Shahid Afridi scored what is becoming a fairly customary hundred in double quick time and Inzamam weighed in with a hundred of his own.



On a more disappointing note, Chris Cairns of New Zealand today announced his retirement from international cricket. Chris Cairns was a cricketer we liked. He was a fast bowler and he hit sixes. We also have the same birthday as him, although Chris is older.

We’re going to have a Guinness for Chris Cairns tonight, because we think that Chris probably drinks Guinness. We're not having one because we always have a Guinness on a Monday night.

Ganguly Watch part 4

He’s out again. We rather foolhardily presumed that he was in the side being as he didn’t get to bat in the last match, but no – he’s out again.

We should listen to our own advice: NEVER second guess the Indian selectors.

EA Cricket 2005 update

We’re not good enough to play as anyone we actually like in EA Cricket 2005 yet, but we are progressing.

Here’s a picture of us playing a textbook cover drive.



Note how we hold the pose for fractionally too long for the benefit of the photographers.



We’ve also found out that we can create a player and one of the names that you can get Richie to call you is one of our nicknames. So it’s as if Richie is ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT US.

Unfortunately, this means that we have to leave the commentary on. For some reason Richie gets over-stimulated when you edge a ball and it’s dropped: “There’s runs there. He’ll regret that. Edged. The bowler’s furious. And dropped.”

This is what happens when you let a bunch of programmers mess with Richie’s words. Less is more EA Sports – less is more.

Great cricketers we have known: World cup winner, Andy Bichel

Proper cricket journalists are always on about how they were chatting to Darren Gough in the hotel bar or out to dinner with Steve Waugh.

Well we’re not going to be outdone, so here’s a brief feature that we’re going to call ‘great cricketers we have known’.

It’s a very brief feature, because as far as we can remember, world cup winner, Andy Bichel’s the only cricketer we’ve ever spoken to, unless we once had a gay affair with Alan Mullally or someone, but we think that we’d remember that.

A couple of years ago Worcestershire were playing Lancashire at Old Trafford. We sat on our own down at fine leg and world cup winner, Andy Bichel was fielding there. We’d always hated world cup winner, Andy Bichel. He seemed the embodiment of self-satisfied Australian triumph. Turns out he’s all right. Bloody Australians.

He just started talking to us as if we were Michael Kasprowicz or someone, rather than a sad bastard in the crowd.

We mostly said embarrassingly stupid things to world cup winner, Andy Bichel. He in turn offered the following information:

The ball wasn’t swinging for him. It was for Matt Mason.
He and ‘Stuey’ (Stuart Law, who was batting) had been mates for years.
He couldn’t look Stuey in the eye when bowling.

Fortunately for world cup winner, Andy Bichel, Stuart Law promptly got himself out at the other end and his uncomfortable ordeal was over.

The next day we went and watched again, but we sat somewhere else because we didn’t want world cup winner, Andy Bichel to think that we were stalking him. Secretly we wanted him to spot us and come and say hello, but he didn’t.

South Africa lose despite absence of Kallis.

An honourable mention for Phil Jaques who scored 94 on his debut, but Brett Lee won this one with 5-22.

Brett Lee is the latest in a long line of Australians who we thought we hated, but actually turn out to be all right. In fact, the day Matthew Hayden turns out to be all right is the day we emigrate.

Dear Australia,

Please can we have a hundred thousand dollars (Australian) for embiggening you when we really, really don't need to?

Love,
Blue and Brown

Zimbabwe suspend themselves from Tests

Zimbabwe's interim cricket board has suspended the nation from Test-level fixtures for the remainder of 2006.

Unfortunately, this makes Bangladesh the worst Test playing nation and we've got something of a soft spot for Bangladesh.

The proper media always gives Bangladesh a hard time about being crap, but look at the ages of the players: They're almost all between 17 and 22. That's outrageous. Even England's A-tour side has more experience than that.

These exact same players will be playing in ten years time and what they'll have then will be ten more years of Test match experience. We dare say they'll be better players then too.

At the minute, hardly any of them have played more than a handful of Tests. As Darren Gough so rightly points out - you can't buy that kind of experience in a local superstore.

We're going to champion Bangladesh from now on in the hope that they will make everyone EAT THEIR WORDS before too long.

Look at it this way - Mohammad Ashraful scored a century against Murali et al in a Test when he was either 16 or 17, depending on who you asked. And you don't think that Australia let him score a century to beat them in a one-dayer last summer, do you?

He's 21 now. How good he's going to be doesn't really bear thinking about and he isn't the only one.

We were going to finish with a Bangladeshi chant, but we don't know any.

The waiting is over.

Yesterday's news was; Sri Lanka beat South Africa; Kallis will probably have to go home; Sehwag and Dravid fell three runs short of the Test opening partnership record; and... EA Cricket 2005 arrived. Hurray.

We started a one-day game as Pakistan against India and Virender Sehwag hit us all round the park - just like in real life.

We started a four-day tour match as Australia (so we didn't mind being rubbish) against Derbyshire and in half an hour of play, just about nothing happened - just like real life.

Jason Gillespie didn't even look like getting a wicket - just like real life.

On a slightly sour note, the first thing that we did was practice batting in the nets and we actually got a bit nervous. This adds further weight to our belief that maybe we're not cut out for Test cricket. Maybe we're a bowler.

Flat pitch! Flat pitch!

Over a thousand runs have been scored in the India-Pakistan Test for the loss of just seven wickets.

Saurav Ganguly must be champing at the bit, but we don’t think that Sehwag or Dravid have any intention of getting out.

Steve Harmison’s place in the King Cricket top ten is now in jeopardy. Having started the week at number nine, Afridi has overtaken him and Virender Sehwag is hovering at his shoulder.

If we were fair, we’d probably promote Sehwag on the strength of the second fastest double hundred of all time (after Nathan Astle’s staggering effort which we should really write about one day).

However – and this is important – we’re not fair. We’re biased. Much as we love Virender Sehwag, we love Steven Harmison more…for now.

We hope that Steve Harmison bowls Sehwag time and again in the England-India series so that we don’t have to do something we don’t want to do. We don’t like doing things we don’t want to do. We sulk. Sometimes we hide, but usually we sulk.

Oh and a quick ‘hello’ to all the journalists who said that England lost the Test series against Pakistan because they couldn’t adapt to slow-paced, attritional cricket. This current match has featured some stultifying batting, eh?

That’s a picture of a spirit level, by the way. It was meant as a comment on the flatness of the Lahore pitch. We’re not very impressed with it either.

Harmison place in jeopardy.

His place in the King Cricket top ten, that is.

We really do love the lanky, unshaven Lovejoy fan, but Virender Sehwag is making a strong case for inclusion with 96 off 89 balls with 20 fours in his current innings.

There's only one way out for his gangliness: Bowl Sehwag in the series against India.

Steve, your fate's in your own hands.

Ganguly Watch part 3

Rahul Dravid was seen in 'heated discussion' with Ganguly yesterday. Being as Dravid has opened the batting, we can presume the conversation went something like this:

Ganguly: Rahul, go and get my bat. I want to practice.
Dravid: No. I'm captain now. You have to go and get my bat, if I ask.
Ganguly: How insolent. Do you know who I am?
Dravid: Yes. You're our number 11. Get my bat, Ganguly.

Then all the other India players gathered round, pointed at Ganguly and went 'aaaaaah' at him in that aggressive way that means 'the joke's on you, sir and we're enjoying it'. Then everyone high-fived Dravid.

Kallis does the decent thing.

South Africa today beat Australia by five wickets thanks largely to Jacques Kallis's golden duck.

South Africa's less selfish batsmen were given ample time to chase Australia's 228 all out after Kallis's mishap.

Kallis's fellow boring cricketer, Shaun Pollock, earlier removed both Australia's openers for ducks to put the home side on the back foot.

Afridi promoted to nine in King Cricket top ten.

I think we should all spare a thought for Rahul Dravid.

You start a new job and the previous incumbent is still hanging around with a surly look on his face. Not only that, you have to tell him what to do and he won’t pull his weight. You actually want him replaced, but your bosses won’t let you get rid of him.

You’re captaining your nation in what is just about the most important sporting event on earth. Things are going badly. Your opponents, Pakistan, are building a truly monumental total at a rate of knots. You get a wicket. You should be happy. Shahid Afridi comes out to bat.

Would there be any less welcoming sight? Your side are haemorrhaging runs. Shahid Afridi is coming out to bat. Your best hope of salvaging something from the match is to slow Pakistan’s scoring rate. Shahid Afridi is coming out to bat. Shahid Afridi is coming out to bat and people are telling him to score some quick runs. There is hardly ever an occasion where you need to instruct Shahid Afridi to score quick runs.

Spare a thought for Harbhajan Singh. Six. Six. Six. Six. Two. One. Twenty-seven runs off the over. The only man to ever score more runs off a Test over is King Cricket himself, Brian Lara. The only reason that you haven’t gone for more than twenty-seven runs is because the batsman took a single off the last ball so that he could have a second attempt at hitting every ball of the over for six.

Here are the bare facts: 103 runs off 80 ball with seven fours and seven sixes.

Apologies to Steve Harmison, but Shahid Afridi is up to number nine in the King Cricket top ten.

Murali loses to Australia

Sorry about the recent overlong posts. Don't run away. We promise we won't do it again.

Australia beat Sri Lanka today despite the presence of Murali, largely due to contributions from Ashes scapegoats Simon Katich, Damien Martyn and Michael Clarke.

Note to Australian selectors: Pick them for the Test team. Pick them. Pick them.

England dull it up to the max.

England announced their squads for the tour of India today. We can't get too worked up about them.

To save you the trouble of reading them, we will provide you with the newsworthy inclusions and omissions.

Shaun Udal is in the Test squad thanks to his complete inability to take any wickets in Pakistan.

James Anderson isn't in the Test squad because the selectors want to grind him into the dirt to test his resilence. Then they want him to stand in front of all his old schoolmates and teachers and drop his trousers. Then and only then will he be considered for England's Test team. We think he's great.

Vikram Solanki is not in the one-day squad.

An extra spinner will be added to the Test squad nearer the time. Expect Monty Panesar to make the grade despite neither he nor previous spare spinner, Alex Loudon, having played a game since the last tour squad was selected.

Following Monty Panesar's selection, expect to read lots of stories about how he's a great spinner but that he can't bat or field. To save proper journalists the trouble of writing about this, simply search for old editorials about Phil Tufnell and just read 'Monty Panesar' instead of 'Phil Tufnell' in each of those ancient stories.

Disaster narrowly averted

While we were researching Matthew Hoggard's 'Holy Crap' entry, below, we made a HORRIFYING DISCOVERY.

Here are the top two players by Test match batting strike rate:

A C Gilchrist, 82.14
Shahid Afridi, 80.22

He's second. Afridi's second. Shahid Afridi is defined by scoring runs quickly all of the time. How can this be?

Fortunately, we then found this, which made us feel better. This is the same statistic but for one-day internationals:

Shahid Afridi, 108.36
I D S Smith, 99.43
V Sehwag, 97.64
R L Powell, 96.66
A C Gilchrist, 95.57

Take that everyone who's ever played cricket. Shahid Afridi scores near enough thirteen runs per hundred balls more than Adam Gilchrist.

The runner-up there, incidentally, is former New Zealand keeper Ian Smith who only ever scored three fifties.

Shahid Afridi holds the record for the fastest one-day hundred, which he scored off 37 balls on his debut. On his DEBUT. He was sixteen in Pakistani years at the time. Pakistani years are the same length as everyone else's but some don't count towards your age.

Adam Gilchrist's fastest one-day hundred was off 73 balls.

As Geoff Boycott might say if his family weren't genetically predisposed to slow scoring: "73 balls? 73 balls? My mum could score a ton faster than that one-handed, with her eyes closed, using a fish instead of a bat - even if the boundaries were set really, really far back."

Loser.

Ganguly Watch Part 2

He's in. Ganguly's in. I think we've all learnt a valuable lesson here - namely, never try and second guess the India selectors.

On the downside, they've dropped Gautam Gambhir to accommodate him. If India were serious about finding a good opening partner for Virender Sehwag they would have played Gambhir or Wasim Jaffer, both of whom are younger and better than Ganguly.

Plus - and this is the part that really upsets us - this means that Dheeraj Jadhav is, at best, fifth choice as opener after Sehwag, Ganguly, Gambhir and Jaffer.

Everyone join with us in directing the most powerful weapon in the critic's armoury at the Indian selectors - the silent boo. Simply make the traditional booing motions, but make no sound.

Take that the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Take that.

The campaign to convince the whole of India that Dheeraj Jadhav is actually from Kolkata starts here.

The least Ganguly can do is grow his moustache back.

Holy Crap: Matthew Hoggard

'Holy Crap' is an occasional feature that we're going to do where we make an unlikely assertion about a player and then back it up with statistics, like the spin doctors do (not the band who had a hit with 'Two Princes', the other kind). As a dismissive caller to a phone-in once said: You can prove anything with facts.

Today's feature is: Holy crap, Matthew Hoggard's a strike bowler.

Matthew Hoggard is inevitably described by proper cricket journalists as 'dogged' and 'willing'. In fact it is part of the British cricket media's code of practice that all writers must refer to him as a 'yeoman'. The image we have is of Hoggard with his 'farm labourers gait' toiling into the wind and waging a war of attrition against opposing batsmen. A quick hand count of cricket journalists who've taken a Test match hat-trick please... Matthew Hoggard has.

A bowler's strike rate is how many balls it takes them to get a wicket on average. I have included several great bowlers from history and their strike rates, starting with Matthew Hoggard. Matthew Hoggard takes a wicket slightly more regularly than once every nine overs.

53.71, Matthew Hoggard
53.75, Imran Khan
54.27, Wes Hall
54.57, Curtly Ambrose
54.65, Wasim Akram

Contemporary bowlers trailing in Hoggard's wake include: Steve Harmison, Andrew Flintoff, Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne.

And so, backed up by facts that are true and words that are about the facts, we say:

Holy crap! Matthew Hoggard's a strike bowler!

Holy Crap

'Holy Crap' is an occasional feature that we're going to do where we make an unlikely assertion about a player and then back it up with statistics, like the spin doctors do (not the band who had a hit with 'Two Princes', the other kind). As a dismissive caller to a phone-in once said: You can prove anything with facts.

Matthew Hoggard
Mark Richardson
Andy Flower
Nathan Bracken

Come on India - you're representing your nation, aren't you?

We'll postpone the next 'Ganguly Watch' until the Test starts, but in the meantime we're looking forward to a better performance from the Indian players in terms of looking as Indian as possible.

What features we will be looking for are a moustache and a nice sensible side parting with good volume.


Previously, the team has been well represented by such greats as Javagal Srinath, who in later years unforgivably shaved off his moustache.















Anil Kumble, although now he too has now removed his moustache.















And finally, for those that remember, Saurav Ganguly in his pomp was the archetypal Indian. Well done Saurav. Maybe you can regain your lost powers if you grow your 'tache back.

Last of our free time frittered away

Hurray. We bought EA Cricket 2005 on ebay at the weekend, but only because Andrew Flintoff made us using the Damien Martyn technique.

We're hoping that we can edit the players so that Shahid Afridi is from Levenshulme and therefore plays for Lancashire and England.

Warney offers insight into the human condition.

Richie Benaud has urged Warne to keep playing until the 2009 Ashes.

Warne said: "Richie is the man, and if he wants me to try and do that I've got to do everything I possibly can to meet his expectations", thus expressing what we all think.

Richie IS the man. We should all do as Richie tells us. Richie is our overlord.

We're sad because Richie won't help us with our (non) career.

Kallis shatters South African hopes by playing in Twenty20 match.

It turned out that all-rounder in name only, Jacques Kallis, did play in the Twenty20 match against Australia.

He scored 15 before being run out and conceded a miserly 17 runs off the single over he was permitted to bowl.

Damien Martyn neglected to give his wicket away on this occasion and must have successfully stared out South Africa’s bowlers using his patented ‘I can see into your soul’ technique, as he managed to score 96 off only 56 deliveries.

We Still Don't Play For England

Last night we thought that we were bowling at hypocritical God-squadder Matthew Hayden in the Ashes.

We had a decent shout for LBW against him, although it was probably drifting down leg-side. When we turned round to appeal, we realised that the umpire was Spider-man.

Spider-man is not one of the ICC’s select band of Test umpires, so we knew that we were dreaming and weren’t really an international cricketer.

We were sad for a bit, but then we remembered that Matthew Hayden had been scoring heaps of runs and therefore England had an easy wicket come the next Ashes. Now we’re happy again.

Murali Thrashes New Zealand

Sri Lanka have managed to win their first one-day international since the discovery of oxygen, even though Murali didn’t take any wickets at all.

In other news, South Africa have received a boost ahead of their Twenty20 game against Australia with the news that two-an-over Jacques Kallis will be unavailable through injury.

Tip: Dheeraj Jadhav

This is Dheeraj Jadhav. At least we think it is.

We think that Dheeraj Jadhav is going to be an amazing batsman for India. He might not use this exact face, but he will use the name Dheeraj Jadhav.

Last year we tipped Gautam Gambhir for greatness (to ourself at least). This year we're going for Dheeraj.

We want Lancashire to sign Dheeraj, but they won't. They only seem to like Australians at the moment.

King Cricket's other tips.

Ganguly Watch