Lancashire sign Nathan Astle

We're used to our hopes being dashed and we'll doubtless be putting that experience to good use. Lancashire have signed Nathan Astle while Brad Hodge is away on training camps and international duty.

As far as we're concerned, Nathan Astle has done one thing: This innings. That he's clearly not going to be anywhere near capable of living up to that will be abundantly clear to all of you. But how are we feeling about Astle being signed for Lancashire? We think he's going to replicate that innings every single time he comes out to bat.

We know in our head that this is not just unlikely, but actually impossible, but we're not one to let facts or reality get in the way of something like this.

As far as we're concerned, Nathan Astle is going to approach the County Championship, shepherd it into a dark alley and proceed to kick its teeth in. Then, for an encore, he's going to boil it down into a liquid, resculpt it back into the shape of the County Championship and then kick its teeth in a second time. Then he's going to have a quick sit down before doing it a third time. Take that the County Championship. Take that.

Imagine how excited we were when Lancashire signed Muralitharan.

Test Match Cricket - the table-top game

Super Cricket? What the blazes is Super Cricket? That, my friend, is Test Match Cricket. And what's with the weird layout of the pitch? It's all gone to rack and ruin.

It's essentially the same game though, let's be fair. Although in our day the bowler was just a glorified ramp. At least your batsman's still a broken toy waiting to happen. Some things never change.

Back when the bowler delivered the ball down a long chute, you could actually hit the ball-bearing back up it, launching it into the air, possibly scaring the cat. In fact we seem to remember more than one instance of 'cat stopped play' as she either chased the ball-bearing, got her claws caught in the immaculately ironed pitch, or stopped for a sleep in the middle of the wicket.

Such were the joys of Test Match Cricket. That and writing down full scorecards for every match and having to somehow fix things so that the tail-end didn't score more runs than your batsmen. That seems to be the abiding theme with all of these games: They're hard to believe in. Do you know why that is? It's because they're games and not real life. We really really really should have made more effort to play for England. Maybe we wouldn't be such a mental if we'd managed it.

More cricket games

International Cricket Captain - think what we could have achieved

Sometimes we review computer games. We got into this by writing an editorial about how we absolutely bloody hate International Cricket Captain but still play it. We're not linking to the article because it's dreadful.

International Cricket Captain is fairly long-winded, but after a few seasons we tended to find that batsmen were averaging less and less and so were bowlers. This annoyed us immeasurably. We devised a whole series of strategies to prevent this so that we could still enjoy the game. None of them worked.

The saddest part is that every now and again we forget how much we hate the game and play it again. It's like the worst kind of addiction. We can't bear thinking about how much time we've wasted.

We really are one of the saddest people in the whole world. We sicken ourself. Empire Interactive - we hold you responsible.

Masochists can buy the latest version here.

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Marcus Trescothick’s Cricket Coach - behold its textual majesty

Marcus Trescothick’s Cricket Coach has been released for the PC. In honour of this, we've decided to make today Cricket Game Day. A couple more posts will be appearing later on about other cricket games. We've already written about our EA Cricket 2005 saga in the past. You can read about it here.

Marcus Trescothick's Cricket Coach looks particularly impressive. This is the kind of game that we like. Look at its textual majesty. No pictures or animation or any of that rubbish here. Just statistics. Reams and reams of stultifying statistics. Cricket fans are crying out for this kind of thing. Hopefully in addition to all of the usual batting averages and stuff, the players' abilities will also be represented in numerical form. We reckon Matthew Hoggard's conventional swing rating would be about 92. Monty Panesar's catching rating would be about 1.

The second great thing about Marcus Trescothick's Cricket Coach is that it's only a tenner. It's always the sign of a well-developed product that its initial RRP is a quarter of that of a normal game.

We can't wait to forsake our real life, preferring instead the world of cricket represented by numbers. Maybe they'll make a special edition binary code version.

You can buy Marcus Trescothick's Cricket Coach here if you want.

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Michael Vandort’s hundred for Sri Lanka

Well played Michael Vandort. Well played indeed. With all the politics surrounding Sri Lanka’s opening batsmen, it was nice to see one of them do so well, even if his opening partner, Upul Tharanga, did bag a pair.

Much as we hate sticking to convention, we’ll have to call Vandort’s innings ‘an obdurate knock’. There were a couple of chances, but it never really felt like England were going to get him out and, crucially, it certainly didn’t feel like Michael Vandort was going to get himself out.

Michael Vandort has gone some way to proving his temperament and ability, batting against a decent attack, in a difficult situation and in relatively unfriendly conditions. If he can do it once, he can do it again, so he deserves an extended run in the side.

We also have a suspicion that he may be one of the giants. Not one of the giants of the game – one of the race of beings, ‘giants’. As we previously mentioned in our post about Essex’s Will Jefferson, giants are far superior to the rest of us, having mastered space travel during prehistory. They are our benevolent overlords, yet they only intervene when absolutely necessary. Clearly the soap opera surrounding Sanath Jayasuriya and Sri Lanka’s next generation of opening batsmen has led the giants to renounce their non-interventionist policy. They have sent us Michael Vandort.

Darren Lehmann wins one-day Roses match for Yorkshire

That Darren Lehmann finished the match as the most successful bowler was a slight surprise; that he finished as the most successful batsman was nothing of the sort. He hit 92 off 69 balls. He’s demonstrably a class above everyone else plying their trade in county cricket.

We’d say that he was Australia’s second-best batsman after Ricky Ponting, which would put him in the top ten in the world. We don’t know what we’re saying by this. We’re just in awe of Darren Lehmann. Maybe that’s what all we’re saying. Maybe that’s all there is to say.

We'll try and shut up about him now. We know that we tend to get a bit carried away with things. Particularly when the player in question's a little bit fat. What is that? Why are we so swayed by it?

Next week, here at King Cricket: We write 25,000 words on why Ian 'Fatty' Austin was the greatest military-medium bowler of all time.

Michael Vaughan’s pull shot

England won a Test. That’s been quite a rare feat since Trent Bridge last year, with only the bizarre final day shenanigans in Mumbai to sustain England Test followers.

One of the things that struck us as England were closing in on victory was Andrew Flintoff’s demeanour when he took wickets. Ordinarily, Flintoff is delighted at taking a wicket, as most bowlers are. During this match, he hasn’t cracked a smile. It’s weird. Either he has started buying into his own celebrity, believing his superiority automatically warrants wickets – which is too horrifying to contemplate – or he is just a tad tired of captaincy. For the sake of all that is good and pure, we’re going for the latter and the good news is that Michael Vaughan is playing cricket today.

We’re happier than we thought we’d be about this. Vaughan has come to represent England success to us. The first important blows were made when Vaughan himself sullied the Australian legend on England’s last tour down under.

We can see it now: Legendary Glenn McGrath rolls in, tormentor of England opening batsmen since time immemorial; he pitches the ball on a length, seaming away a fraction. But rather than feather the ball through to Gilchrist in the time-honoured England opening tradition, Vaughan rocks back and pulls the ball for four. It’s an outrageous shot. The ball was far too full for the pull stroke. Then, over the course of the day, Vaughan proves that it wasn’t just luck or misjudgement that produced that stroke, as he performs it again and again and again.

Welcome back to cricket, Michael. We hope your knee’s feeling better.

Some other batsmen and their signature shots

Kevin Pietersen’s reverse sweep for six

By any measure Kevin Pietersen’s reverse swept six was a remarkable shot. Pietersen himself described it as a ‘naughty little shot after I reached my hundred,’ which goes to show that he knew that it was self-indulgent.

That he attempted it was brave. It was also a little unnecessary. We can forgive him for it, because he got away with it and that’s pretty much the way Kevin Pietersen bats. However, in England’s second innings, chasing an easy total, he tried another reverse sweep, missed it and was almost given out. We’ve nothing against the shot, but sometimes you’ve just got to play according to the situation and in England’s second innings he should have just been looking for the singles to try and close out the game.

The Test Match Special commentary team were wondering whether anyone had ever hit a reverse sweep for six in a Test match before. They concluded that no-one had. Didn’t Andy Flower do it? We don’t know this for a fact, but he’s a mighty powerful reverse sweeper of the ball. It’s not a risky indulgent shot when Flower plays it. It’s a legitimate scoring shot because he plays it with such control. Anyone? Has Andy Flower hit a reverse sweep for six in a Test match?

We’ve been practicing the reverse sweep in the kitchen this morning. After a couple of minutes of wondering why our knee kept getting in the way, we gave up and went for a nice quiet sit down.

The Rob Key situation reaches crisis point

Those of you who’ve been keeping up to date with the scores in the County Championship will be aware of the horrifying fact that Rob Key hasn’t yet scored a hundred. Yesterday he played onto his stumps for 28 and it occurred to us that maybe the Rob Key situation had reached crisis point.

With Alastair Cook taking his place in the England team along with Paul Collingwood and Ian Bell and Owais Shah lining up behind them, our hero has fallen quite some way down the queue. So we’ve come up with an action plan. It’s so simple we don’t know why we didn’t come up with it sooner. It was staring us in the face. Perhaps it was just too obvious. Rob Key has to get back into the Test team. This is how:

Rob Key must score a quintuple century.

Nobody can ignore a batsman who goes past 500 in a first-class match. Breaking Brian Lara’s record of 501 would make up for Rob Key’s lack of hundreds so far and it would send his batting average sky-high. At a stroke he would leapfrog everyone and earn a place in the England side. Then he could set about scoring some Test match hundreds convincing everyone of his genius.

This plan must be executed without delay. Does anybody have any idea – any idea at all – how we can go about doing this?

Rob Key posts:
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West Indies win one-day series

India aren’t as good abroad as they are at home. Nothing’s really changed there. But if I were Indian I’d merely consider it a setback. The one-day team’s really shown itself to be a thing of substance for quite a while now. This doesn’t undo all that.

The West Indies can still win matches. You’d be forgiven for thinking this wasn’t the case if you read about them much. So does this one-day series victory mean that Brian Lara’s bold new West Indies team are showing signs of becoming a force again?

Not really.

The West Indies are probably on an upward curve, but it’s quite a shallow curve at present. We’ll repeat our view of the team because it hasn’t changed:

The West Indies have a talented batting line-up, but they don’t have enough cutting edge in their bowling attack. When their attack does recapture some bite the knock-on effect will be that the batting line-up will be under less pressure and will score more heavily. It all hinges on finding or honing some bowlers though. That’s the keystone. That’s what everything else will build on. It’s like our tooth in the dream that we described here.

Kevin Pietersen is a really good batsman who is really good at batting

As we write, Kevin Pietersen's 142 positively dwarfs the next best personal score in this Test - 30 by Vaas and Strauss. What impresses us most about Kevin Pietersen's batting is the way he influences the situation. Most batsmen upon finding themselves under pressure try and ride it out attritionally. Kevin Pietersen's more pro-active than that. He sets out to change the field and even the tone of the game.

This isn't just a matter of trying to hit the ball out of the ground (although it often manifests itself through this). It's just a matter of moving the fielders. Pietersen can hit the ball in some unexpected directions and he uses this to manipulate the fielding side. There's more thought going into this than most people think. We guarantee it.

At one point in his mammoth 158 in the last Ashes Test, he deliberately went after Brett Lee who had been troubling him. True, he could and should have been out many times over by this point, but he recognised that as long as Lee was bowling it was only a matter of time before he finally did lose his wicket, so he hit him out of the attack. There was a lot of luck involved, but it worked. This isn't the best example of Pietersen influencing the bowling side, but it's the most memorable. The best instances are the ones that you don't even notice because he seems to be under no pressure at all.

So to summarise: Kevin Pietersen amazes us.

Monty Panesar's catching and fielding

Monty Panesar's fielding is dreadful, just dreadful. He CAN catch. He CAN stop the ball. It's just by no means guaranteed.

Action plans seem to take one of two forms: One, England drop him for someone with better co-ordination; two, England make the sacrifice so as to benefit from his excellent bowling. We're siding with Duncan Fletcher on this one with option three: Teach Monty Panesar how to bloody well field.

The problem is that we're not sure if it's going to happen. We're of the opinion that a good deal of hand-eye co-ordination development occurs as a child and Monty Panesar was presumably busy with Transformers at this time. No-one's going to criticise him for that. Much as we love cricket, if we had owned Scorponok (pictured) we would have had a hard time tearing ourself away from him in order to go and bat on our own with a sawn-off adult bat and a sponge ball. So it may be that Monty Panesar just won't ever be able to field as well as his Transformer-deprived teammates.

But nevertheless it's worth trying because he's such a good bowler. If he can raise his fielding from 'catastrophic' to 'occasionally dicey' England will put up with it. So will we. We love Monty Panesar, but we reserve the right to be annoyed with his fielding. It's not endearing. It's not loveable. It's bad. We'll find him far more endearing and loveable when he's diving full length to catch Ricky Ponting at the MCG.

Liam Plunkett's consistent, accurate bowling

Liam Plunkett has a great name. Liam Plunkett is also a very promising bowler. We haven't been blinded by our enthusiasm for Sajid Mahmood. If we had been writing King Cricket last year, Liam Plunkett would have been one of our Ones To Watch. We kept our eye on him all season

Yesterday, at Edgbaston, he bowled immaculately. He's not as eye-catching as Mahmood, primarily because he's not as quick, but yesterday he bowled with great accuracy, at the right length and swung the ball a bit. Before he took Michael Vandort's wicket, he bowled him an absolute beauty that turned the batsman front-on.

He's not a great interviewee as yet though. Hopefully he was just nervous, but there's definitely the potential for lots of comments about 'putting the ball in the right areas' and how the team all gets on together.

Liam Plunkett's barely 21 as well, so he's quite precocious. He's got a good solid action, so there's no real reason to expect him to drastically lose form. Hopefully it should minimise injury too. And just think - he's a handy batsman now. He could be pretty decent in five or ten years time.

So, in summary: England should play to their strengths and pick nine pace bowlers.

A beer with Channel 5's Test match highlights

At one point we thought that England were going to bowl out Sri Lanka for double figures, but it was 141 in the end. And to think that we weren't going to have a beer tonight. 7.15pm: We'll be sat there; beer in one hand, remote control in the other hand.

It'll be a Lion Stout of course.

It's good to see that England's bowling and catching is in (pretty much) full working order today. The trick is to maintain it. After the first Test, England must surely be in on the little-known secret that you have to bowl a side out twice to win a game.

We really should do at least some work today.

What's wrong with the English?

So Sri Lanka are 25-4. How is the average Englishman feeling about it?

"Oh, it's obviously going to go the same way as the last match. We bowl them out for nothing in the first innings and then their tailenders will save the match. England just can't bowl sides out."

What is it with the English? Why are they so monumentally stupid and negative?

We're English. We're not like that. We're overjoyed that England are in this position. That quote, incidentally, comes from a colleague who represents the England Deaf Cricket Team, so they aren't unknowledgable.

We hate the English. We can only imagine how those of you from what was the British empire must feel. At least we brought cricket and then let you all beat us at it.

To the English! (Raises cup of tea and adopts pompous facial expression.)

Lasith Malinga's bowling action

Lasith Malinga's bowling action is first-class. He slats it. He whangs it. He slings it. He doesn't chuck it. Better not use the word 'chuck'. No, what Lasith Malinga does is what all of us used to do when we were kids. He just tries to propel the ball as fast as humanly possible. It looks pretty weird, but it's effective. There are pros and cons.

Pros:

Lasith Malinga's action uses every part of his body in generating pace.

The ball is released from an unusually low point, which can catch out batsmen used to more conventional actions.

If he swings the ball in, it will also dip, due to the angle of the seam. Waqar Younis's inswinging yorker did this. Waqar Younis's inswinging yorker was just about the best delivery there's ever been.

If he swings it out, the ball will also rise, pitching fuller than the batsmen anticipates. This is likely to lead to false strokes.

Cons:

Accuracy. If Lasith Malinga releases at the wrong moment, the ball will either go full and down the leg side, or short and on the off-side.

Those of you with modern internet connections or at work can see a video of Lasith Malinga bowling against the West Indies here.

Go on Lasith Malinga. You fire your tennis ball into that piece of wood propped up with a brick. Your bowling action's purer than any in international cricket.

Read our latest stuff about Lasith Malinga
Read our latest stuff about Sri Lanka

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Test match nerves and giddiness

We're not actually that nervous. We're just sort of wired. We get a bit highly charged before a Test match, which is a strange sensation because there's no outlet for our energy. Its further evidence that we're genetically predisposed to excel in the world of Test match cricket.

Here are our predictions for this Test:

Sajid Mahmood will take, ooh, let's say 12 wickets in the match.
Andrew Flintoff will score a hundred.
Geraint Jones will score an 'effervescent fifty'.
Mahela Jayawardene will hit a fifty in each innings.
England will win by a mile.

Then we'll cheer and try and celebrate and probably realise that there's no-one around to celebrate with because it's a Monday night.

Mushtaq Ahmed takes lots of wickets

Mushtaq Ahmed's great isn't he? Stumbling in with all the eagerness of a slightly simple dog; screaming his appeals like a slightly simple dog; and working out the batsman's weaknesses like the biggest supercomputer in the world. Plus he's got a beard. We're a fan of Mushtaq Ahmed's, make no mistake. We're led to believe that he's a nice bloke as well, but we'd think that Mushtaq Ahmed was nice whether we'd heard that or not.

There was a strange sort of a match between Durham and Sussex yesterday. Sussex won by an innings and 39 runs having only managed 229 in their one innings. Durham were bowled out for 110 in their first innings and then, having reached 47 without loss in their second innings, fell to 80 all out.

It was pretty damp weather yesterday, so your first thought would be that it was perfect weather for swing and seam, but that wasn't it. Steve Harmison may have proved his form with 4-43 during Sussex's innings and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, who we were embiggening a couple of days ago, may have taken nine wickets in the match, but it was Mushtaq Ahmed's day - as it so often is.

He took three wickets in an over to presage Durham's second innings collapse and finished with match figures of 10-37. It's probably fair to say that Durham's batsmen didn't get the measure of him. Not many do. We could probably take the trouble to find out how many wickets he's taken in county cricket and at what average, but we all know how good Mushtaq Ahmed is without statistics, don't we?

Mushtaq Ahmed is as good as buying the wrong type of beer only to find that you prefer your accidental selection.

Thanks to "pressure" we will be around to comment on the Test

You'll all be delighted to hear that we will be around for the Test after all. The current owner of the house that we're buying has complained of being under pressure to move. Legendary Aussie all-rounder, Keith Miller once said: "Pressure is a Messerschmitt up your arse" - it's not other people trying to stick to move dates that were set months ago. In any case the upshot is that now we're moving between Tests.

Of course there's always the chance that the current owner is a reader of ours and can't bear the thought of our absence during a key Test match. Well if you are, we've a message for you: Get out. Get out. Get out of the house. Pick up your stuff and leave. Stop messing us about.

England v Sri Lanka, second Test at Edgbaston

Back to back Tests are rubbish. You need time to digest Test cricket. A week off in between is perfect. So on to Edgbaston then with our enthusiasm intact. There was a half-decent match there last year. We've never roared so loudly as when Geraint Jones caught Michael Kasprowicz - not even when we've been trying to ward off predators.

We're siding with just about everybody who says stuff about cricket in believing that England will take their catches and win this match. However, Jayawardene's obviously in great form and Sri Lanka's other batsmen have shown signs of improvement, so Murali could have something to bowl at. Lasith Malinga must surely get a game as well and it will be interesting to see how he does.

Unfortunately, you might not hear from us quite so frequently during this Test as we're moving house. In light of Old Trafford's retention as Lancashire's ground, we're moving slightly further away from it. We'll try and write something when we can. Oh no. Wait. We won't have the internet. Moving house is rubbish.

We'll work something out.

Ramnaresh Sarwan goes one better

That was a bit unexpected. We were all set to write a 'crashing back down to earth' type post about the West Indies, but they only went and beat India again. Good on them.

Ramnaresh Sarwan improved on his 98 not out from the last match with 115 not out as the West Indies overhauled India's 245 off the penultimate ball of the match. If you look at India's scorecard it doesn't look like it adds up to 245. Sehwag gave them a flying start with 97 off 83 balls, but then it all fell away. The entire middle order, Kaif, Dhoni and Rao were all run out and no-one below them reached double figures.

West Indies are showing signs of improvement, but they often do prior to a disaster. It's only two wins. We're withholding all talk of a renaissance until they're bowling England out for double-figure scores again.

Steve Harmison gets to play for Durham

It’s quite a rarity. Durham will be seeing more of Steve Harmison this season than they have for years. England’s selectors have decreed that Harmison is not sufficiently match-fit to earn a place in the Test side.

We’re disappointed about this because Steve Harmison’s one of our favourite players. It’s also about time that Destructive Steve Harmison showed his face, rather than Faintly Underwhelming Steve Harmison. We’re not as big a fan of Faintly Underwhelming Steve Harmison and he’s been playing more and more matches for England recently. Stephen Fleming once described Harmison as ‘like Glenn McGrath, only more dynamic’. We’d like to see more of that guy.

At least Liam Plunkett and Sajid Mahmood get more of a chance to show what they’re made of (primarily water, we're led to believe) so every cloud has a silver lining. Well, not every cloud. The clouds that have been shrouding the British Isles for the last week or more haven’t got silver linings. They’ve got wet linings. Has anyone ever found a way of punching clouds in the face?

Rana Naved-ul-Hasan in the County Championship

Has anyone noticed how good Rana Naved-ul-Hasan is? You must have. He’s taking wickets for fun, same as he did last year. Of course he’s only the latest in a reasonably long line of Pakistani fast bowlers tearing English counties to pieces. Wasim Akram spent many years at Lancashire and Waqar Younis topped the bowling averages for about fifteen years on the trot. The difference with Naved-ul-Hasan is that he’s not really proved himself a particularly effective Test bowler.

Well expect that to change. Naved-ul-Hasan will decimate England’s batting line-up later in the summer. We’re as sure of that as we are that we’re going to get distracted by a cup of tea before the end of this paragraph (we’re going to make a cup now). He can’t possibly be so consistently excellent in county cricket without backing it up with at least something for Pakistan. When better a time than in English conditions having acclimatised for a couple of months. Beware England batsmen. Beware.

Of course he could just be Pakistan’s answer to Jon Lewis. Although there’s no saying that Jon Lewis wouldn’t be a great international bowler. We can’t keep afloat amongst all this conjecture. We may as well stick with it though: There’s no saying that WE wouldn’t make a great international bowler. That’s not even conjecture. You prove otherwise. This post has kind of lost its way. Best reel it in. Er, Naved-ul-Hasan, something-something-something…

Nathan Astle’s double hundred against England at Christchurch in 2002

We were days from the nearest road in Nepal when this match took place. When we got back to the land of newspapers, we read the match reports, day-by-day. We couldn’t get our head round this match.

First of all, let’s set the scene. England batted first and promptly lost two wickets in the first over. They recovered to 228 all out, thanks largely to Nasser Hussain’s 106. In reply, New Zealand were toppled by an immense spell of swing bowling by Matthew Hoggard, who took 7-63 in bowling them out for 147.

England’s second innings subsided to 85-4 and then 106-5 and at this point it’s clearly not a batsmen’s game. Then, out of the blue, Graham Thorpe and Andrew Flintoff shared a partnership of 261. Thorpe scored what was at the time, the third fastest Test double hundred off 231 balls. Flintoff weighed in with his debut century, hitting 137 off 163 balls. England eventually declared on 468, setting New Zealand 550 to win. Then Nathan Astle went mental.

New Zealand eventually made 451 and lost the match, but nobody remotely cares about that. In New Zealand’s innings two batsmen passed 50. Mark Richardson hit 76. Nathan Astle hit 222. Not only that, he scored them off 167 balls.

Astle’s first hundred took 114 balls. 100 to 150 took a further 22 balls and 150 to 200 took a mere 17 balls. Seven consecutive Andy Caddick deliveries over the space of two overs went for 4, 6, 6, 4, 6, 6 and 6.

The ninth wicket fell at 333. Nathan Astle clearly still thought that he could win the match. Why? Why did he think this? Not only that, but he thought that he’d try and complete the task within an hour. England bowled good balls; Astle thrashed them for six.

Logic and reason decreed that New Zealand were dead and buried. The history of cricket proved with facts that New Zealand were essentially dead and buried. The loss of nine wickets and the fact that his batting partner was injured should have told Nathan Astle that New Zealand were dead and buried. Nathan Astle just decided to ignore all that. Instead he concentrated on carting the ball over the stands.

This is why we will always love Nathan Astle. He’s the man who out-Shahid-Afridied Shahid Afridi.

Ian Bradshaw – a good bowling performance that we’ll forget about if we don’t write about it RIGHT NOW

We have trouble remembering Ian Bradshaw. He’s got a fantastically dull name. We saw that he’d taken 3-33 against India, then immediately forgot. We remembered the figures, but not the bowler, so we checked again: Ian Bradshaw. Ten seconds later we’ve forgotten again. His 3-33 against India was a tidy effort. At nearly 32, he’s not going to be the bowling saviour that the West Indies so desperately need, but he’d be a more than capable support act.

The West Indies aren’t as disastrous as people often make out. If they could somehow find a pair of strike bowlers, they could fashion a more than handy team. If they weren’t constantly chasing the game, they have more than enough talent in their batting line-up to make big totals. It’s amazing how much easier it is to bat when you’ve gone past your opponents score. A couple of good bowling performers and we bet that they’d be more up-for-it in the field as well. Bowling’s always the key. Bowlers win matches.

But as we said, Ian Bradshaw isn’t that match-winning bowler. He’d be the unsung first-change bowler, keeping it tight. That way we wouldn’t have to remember his name as well.

Yuvraj Singh is great but not flawless

King Cricket’s nominee for world’s best one-day international batsmen in the world at batting worldwide nearly got India home in the second one-dayer against the West Indies. But not quite.

India tantalisingly fell two runs short of victory with Yuvraj Singh being the last man out for 93. It was a tale of two batsmen in many ways. Yuvraj’s 93 was a significant proportion of India’s 197 and Ramnaresh Sarwan’s 98 not out was a slightly greater proportion of the West Indies’ 198. That slight difference proved to be of great significance as the West Indies shaded it.

It also brought to an end India’s run of 17 consecutive successful run-chases. A staggering achievement and one in which Yuvraj played a great part. That he failed today when India required only two runs from the last three balls was quite a shock really. Regardless of that, his magnificent run of form seems to be showing no signs of coming to an end. We think that cricket may be entering the Yuvraj Singh era. Maybe we should get some t-shirts made or something.

Does anyone know what Yuvraj Singh eats? We’re going to start eating whatever it is. It’s not impeccable hand-eye coordination, hours of practice, a constantly evolving gameplan and experience that makes Yuvraj a great batsman – it’s his breakfast.

Lasith Malinga has to play in the second Test

Surely Lasith Malinga will get picked for the second Test. Surely.

Sri Lanka’s pace attack was neither pacy nor an attack in the first Test. Malinga is genuinely quick, which would offer something in itself. There’s also the small matter of his action. If you’ve not batted against Malinga before, it must be quite unnerving. Besides the sheer speed, he slings the ball with a very low arm. Think an exaggerated version of Waqar Younis. The ball comes through a trajectory that batsmen aren’t particularly used to. It’s often said that steep bounce is one of a fast bowlers’ greatest strengths, well this is the opposite.

Malinga took 5-79 in the current warm-up game against Sussex. True, the Sussex team is virtually unrecognisable, but Malinga’s made more of a case for himself than any of his team mates.

When we were being taught cricket, we were told to keep our bowling arm as high as possible. There’s no doubt in our mind that we would currently be leading England’s bowling attack if we had bowled round-arm like Malinga. No doubt whatsoever. We weren’t rubbish, you understand. Not rubbish at all. Just mismanaged.

Mark Butcher is wasting our time

The general rule for the Ones to Watch is that if one of them takes five wickets or scores a hundred, they get a post. Of course there's the obvious and eternal exception of Rob Key who'll get a mention if he so much as leaves his house (you'll have to come out soon, Rob - we can wait here all week, you know). There's also the Tom Smith thing where every 'encouraging' performance is documented in triplicate. Basically, the Ones to Watch rules are meaningless.

In light of this, I'd like to point out that Mark Butcher has passed fifty on no fewer than one million occasions this season without once reaching a hundred. We know this because we always check his score so that we don't miss anything. It always looks like he's going to get a hundred, but he never does. He's toying with us.

Well the jokes on you, Mark. We've made your inability to earn a post on King Cricket a post in its own right.

Tom Smith - voter apathy likely to hold him back

We've neglected our Tips for the Future for quite a while now. It occurred to us that maybe Tom Smith of Lancashire warranted inclusion after he took 4-55 yesterday.

By any standards Tom Smith has had a blazing start to the season, but there are a few factors counting against him. Our Tips for the Future are meant to be international players who we hope will make a big impact at Test level and in that regard we have a few reservations about Tom Smith.

If other observers are to be believed, he's not actually fast, but fast-medium. In international cricket we don't have a great deal of time for fast-medium bowlers. It's the difference between Old Jason Gillespie and Current Jason Gillespie for example. Also, there's the first season syndrome, where players achieve a great deal because no-one knows what they're doing. The following season when opposing players are familiar with them, they struggle.

Conversely, he's clearly doing something right to take all these wickets; we thought that he was quite quick; and rumour has it he can bat a bit. So should we make the leap and induct him in our Tips for the Future or not? There's nothing at stake because we don't have any credibility, but we would have to write another post and then copy the link into the Tips for the Future post. If there's any opinion either way from our readers, we'll go with that.

Rahul Dravid - postponement of gushing praise

Rahul Dravid's 105 off 102 balls saw off West Indies in the first one-day international. We hold Dravid in very high regard and were about to shower him with praise for his unbelievable consistency. However, we've decided to rein ourself in a bit.

A hundred in a one-day match against the West Indies is impressive, but hardly excelling himself for Dravid. If we laud him today - even in general terms - what are we going to do when he scores a better hundred? We've got to leave ourself room for manoevre.

Old Trafford's new look - exclusive preview

Once again we dream about cricket. This time we were treated to the new look for Old Trafford after its upcoming £30 million redevelopment.

And so, through the power of dreams, we can exclusively reveal Old Trafford's new look: It will look EXACTLY the same as Trent Bridge only where it says 'Trent Bridge' at Trent Bridge, it will instead say 'Old Trafford'.

The dream has foretold it.

Yuvraj Singh is one of a whole bunch of keys

We were going to say that Yuvraj Singh is the key for India in their upcoming series against the West Indies, but we don't think that at all. Every Indian player could win a match. The West Indies are more dependent on a certain few, but they've a chance.

We only said Yuvraj Singh because we went a bit mental and called him the best one-day international batsman in the world a while back. Surely that could just be 'the best one-day international batsman' or the best 'one-day batsman in the world'? Well it's too late now. You can't delete words on a computer can you? What? Which key? Oh.

We didn't realise that Yuvraj Singh shared eyes with Damien Martyn, incidentally. Look at them. It's like he can see into your soul.

India are by far the better side, but the West Indies up their game a touch at home and India are traditionally bad travellers. We're putting our imaginary money on India all the same. Partly as a result of reason and partly because we just prefer India. We'd like to see an actual bowling performance from the West Indies at some point though. It's been a long time since that happened.

Do cricket fans dream of fat cricketers?

You may not believe this, but it's equally possible that you will: We genuinely dream about overweight cricketers. Last night it was Darren Lehmann's turn. We'd like to dream about women or something, but for some reason, we don't get a say in it, even though it's our brain that's responsible.

Darren Lehmann From Dreams doesn't like being touched on his right shoulder. He'd just finished compiling a typically classy hundred for Victoria (does he play for Victoria at the moment?) and his batting partner put his arm around him to congratulate him. "Don't touch me there," said Darren Lehmann From Dreams.

We've always thought that, like most Australians, Darren Lehmann would be an easy-going sort of bloke. Darren Lehmann From Dreams seemed kind of grumpy. We spoke to him after his innings, which was compiled entirely during twilight for some reason. We thought we'd try and lighten the mood by cracking a joke about certain county teams trying to pick up extra bowling points by playing on sub-standard pitches. Darren Lehmann From Dreams didn't crack a smile. We can't say we blame him. He said that he didn't think anyone was doing that.

Darren Lehmann should still be playing for Australia

Underrated Mal Loye has scored a hundred in today’s Roses match. We fully expect Darren Lehmann to do likewise when Yorkshire bat. Words can’t describe how much we think of Darren Lehmann. That he isn’t mentioned in the same breath as Lara and Tendulkar confounds us daily.

If Australia are going to persist with their policy of reverting to older players when they’ve got perfectly good younger ones hanging around getting into mischief, they may as well do it properly. That is to say that they should pick Darren Lehmann again. He’s probably retired from international cricket, we’re not sure, but who cares anyway. He’s magic. Lehmann’s worth half a dozen Damien Martyns and he could offer Ponting a bit of tactical advice too.

War of the Roses

It’s the Roses match: Lancashire against Yorkshire; red rose against white rose. This is the point in the season where we Lancastrians exert our eternal superiority over our backward neighbours.

Actually, that’s not strictly true. What will actually happen is that we Lancastrians will show our Yorkshire neighbours how our Australians, Brad Hodge and Stuart Law, are better than their Australians, Darren Lehmann and Jason Gillespie.

To be fair to each county, they’re shorn of some of their better local heroes. Lancashire rarely see Andrew Flintoff anyway and on top of that, James Anderson’s injured and Sajid Mahmood has been on international duty. For Yorkshire, their part-timers are Michael Vaughan and Matthew Hoggard.

Many Yorkshiremen refer to a ‘push-rod’ which is a bicycle to you and me. According to them, if you give a second person a lift on your bike, it’s a ‘croggie’. There won’t be any bikes at this match, but international readers must be able to appreciate how important it is for Lancashire to defeat a county that is so clearly demented.

Lancashire are staying at Old Trafford

It’s yet another post starting with a ‘hurrah’.

Hurrah. Lancashire are staying at Old Trafford. We’d whoop and high-five people, but there’s no-one here. Instead we’re celebrating the only way we know how: With an extra cup of tea. We can always push our next cup back by half-an-hour to accommodate it. It’s a celebration after all.

Presumably Lancashire’s committee, or whoever’s in charge, have deduced that it was a stupid idea to go to east Manchester for transport reasons when there’s no tram link there. Particularly when you consider that Old Trafford Cricket Ground IS a tram stop, let alone near one.

Presumably they also deduced that Wigan was just a bit too Lancastrian. You can take these things too far.

Sri Lanka’s positive approach when under the cosh and England’s non-approach when supplying said cosh

That’s the worst title we’ve had for a post yet. It’s totally archaic for one thing. Nobody uses coshes any more – thankfully.

Having criticised the title, it’s actually quite hard to add to. Sri Lanka responded well when they could easily have capitulated. England didn’t seem to be able to rouse themselves when they needed to. Part of being top-flight sportsmen is motivating yourself whatever the circumstances. Sri Lanka managed this. England didn’t.

Other than that, we’d like to draw attention to England’s magnificent fielding, featuring ten dropped catches in an innings, or one whole batting line-up, you could say. When Paul Collingwood and Andrew Flintoff are grounding chances, something’s wrong. We don’t know what, but we’d better not see any more of it.

The other issue was Monty Panesar bowling only six overs on Monday. We can’t explain this either. Hopefully a grown-up journalist with access to Andrew Flintoff will get the answer.

Mahela Jayawardene: The art of playing for pride, then the draw and maybe, if all goes well, a win

What would you have done in Mahela Jayawardene's position? We'd have missed a straight one and led by example. Jayawardene had other ideas though. He thought he'd bat on and get a century. Following-on is never an easy thing to do. It's hard to motivate yourself to bat in those circumstances. Victory's merely a pipe dream, so you're playing for a draw and your pride.

Having said that, Sri Lanka aren't out of it now. A few quick runs this morning and then that man Muralitharan bowling as England chase 100-and-odd. It could be a nerve-wracker yet. On the other hand, Sri Lanka's last four wickets could provide no resistance leaving England 50 to win. Part of us would hate this to happen - all Jayawardene's excellent work undone at a stroke. There's a larger part of us that wants exactly this to happen though. We're English above impartial.

Whichever way this goes, Jayawardene's impressed us. With several of the Sri Lankan batsmen you get the impression that maybe their averages are inflated by higher scoring home pitches. Not with Jayawardene. He's succeeded in enough different conditions and over a sufficiently long period of time to prove himself a class act. This innings proved his character as well. He's obviously got that ability to bat well in difficult circumstances as well as difficult conditions. We're not sure that many of England's batsmen have got that. They can rise to the big occasion or compete when it's a nailbiter, but to rouse yourself when you and your team are mentally down is another skill altogether.

We're not going to be madly disappointed if Sri Lanka get away with this one. Although if they win it, we might feel otherwise. We'd probably paint the flag of St George all over our body and stand naked in front of Lord's ramming skewers into little voodoo dolls of England players while unleashing bestial howling at the top of our voice. You've got to make your feelings known, haven't you?

Pronouncing Sri Lankan names

How do you pronounce 'Jayawardene'? We've always gone for 'JayaWARdene', but Nasser Hussain seems to favour 'JayawarDEENer'. We could have written that in phonetic script to make things easier, but most of you won't read phonetic script. That's our one single skill, so we've shoe-horned it into this post unnecessarily.

Nasser Hussain seems to have been emphasising 'Jayawardene' differently to the rest of the UK commentators anyway. He seems to be making a point of it. Is he right? Commentators over here seem to be singularly disrespectful to some of the Sri Lankan names. Either that or they're borderline incompetent. We don't know how to pronounce all of the Sri Lankans' names. We rely on the commentators to tell us. It's their job. They deal in pronouncing words. Sure, they're difficult and multi-syllabic to English-speaking ears (weird image) - all the more reason to make the effort, surely?

'Kapugedara' seems to be a particular stumbling block. If we've heard it pronounced one way, we've heard it pronounced three ways. Somebody's wrong.

Update: Someone called Mahinda Kularatne wrote to the Guardian's over-by-over coverage to say that they pronounced it 'Jiya-war-DEEN-er'. Full marks to Nasser Hussain. Black marks for everyone else. This fits with what we were told: By and large, emphasise the penultimate syllable of Sri Lankan names - JayasuRIYa, TillekeRATne, SamaraWEERa etc.

Matthew Hoggard, 200 Test wickets

We felt that we should do some sort of tribute to Matthew Hoggard in honour of his taking his 200th Test wicket. If you watched Hoggard bowl today then that's probably tribute enough.

He swung the ball, bowled an immaculate line and threw in the odd slower delivery. He flies in the face of our fast-bowler worshipping policy. He bowls at about 80 miles an hour, but he's as devastating a bowler as England have got. He's no supporting act to Flintoff and Harmison. You can read our slightly dated post about how he's a strike bowler here.

To celebrate Matthew Hoggard's 200th Test wicket, we're going to crack open a beer and watch a bit of telly. It's how he'd want it. We might even have a pizza. What's that you say, Matthew? You think we should definitely have a pizza? Very well. For you, Matthew. Just for you.

Channel 5's cricket highlights

You'd think that making the move to perennial sneering target, Channel 5, would have brought Mark Nicholas down a peg or two, but no, he's still standing there smugly in his suit, faintly patronising us all.

The contrast with Sky's commentary team couldn't be greater. Sky have got a battalion of commentators all squabbling for attention. Channel 5 have got three: Nicholas, who doubles as the anchorman; Geoff Boycott; and Simon Hughes, who reprises his analyst role occasionally. The big question for us is whether the commentators are given highlights to comment on after the event, or whether they're forced to commentate on a whole day's cricket with nobody listening. We went through a phase like that once. We're happy that it was never televised though. Very happy.

All-in-all we're quite happy with the Channel 5 highlights. There's a faintly budget air about the whole enterprise, but at least they've taken the trouble to put some cricket on TV. And at least they don't have Willow and Stumpy.

Willow and Stumpy - Sky Sports' animated shame

We've had our first view of Willow and Stumpy today. For those who don't know, Willow is a talking cricket bat and Stumpy is, not entirely unexpectedly, a stump. Together they explain the ins and outs of cricket for the benefit of no-one. They crop up intermittently during Sky's cricket coverage.

Children know when they're being forced to learn something. They're particularly attuned to those times when they're taught something in a 'fun and exciting' way. Are they so stupid that they can't tell that the subject matter's dull simply because it's being expressed by a talking cricket bat? Edutainment: The worst of both worlds.

If kids are watching cricket they'll pick things up as they go along. There's no real point getting them to use all the correct terminology. They don't care. If they want to play cricket, they just want to play it. They can find out what all the shots are called afterwards.

The only conceivable use for Willow and Stumpy would be a sequence depicting Stumpy being hammered into the ground using Willow's face. The ensuing damage to Willow's visage ought to teach kids to look after the faces of their cricket bats. That's a picture of a cricket stump mallett. Get one. Look after your bat. Or at least use the end of the handle. Cricket bats cost money you know, you little ingrate.

Sajid Mahmood - now do you see what we're on about?

This is a bad combination. This is the first time in a while that we've had access to the internet and live TV coverage simultaneously. Add beer into that equation later on and King Cricket's already low editorial quality might take a nosedive.

Sajid Mahmood anyway. What an enormous pile of unadulterated, stellar class. If you're not watching this, take our word for it: This is proper fast bowling. FAST BOWLING. Remember it? Allan Donald, Waqar Younis - those sorts of guys. Batsmen are scared. Batsmen are out. Bowlers are on top. It's cricket the way it's meant to be (in our little fast-bowling fantasy land anyway).

Great stuff. Right. We'd better get on with making tea (dinner, whatever). It's Sri Lankan-style. Anyone know how to make string hoppers?

Muttiah Muralitharan in England

Watching Muralitharan bowl yesterday was more than a delight. It's his first Test at Lord's and it got us thinking about how few matches the Sri Lankans have played in England.

We're really quite disappointed at how little we've seen of Murali over here. It took a 'shock' Sri Lankan victory in 1998 in a one-off Test before they got what they deserved - a proper tour. Those responsible for England's home fixtures got a firm kick in the teeth with that Sri Lankan victory. The subtext (there's always a subtext) of giving them a one-off Test was that that was all they deserved. Sri Lanka proved otherwise and deservedly humiliated England.

Murali's bowling yesterday - although not the bowling of his teammates - rammed the point home. The Sri Lankans have been treated to the earliest ever Test match in England. The pitch is green and there was talk of England picking five seamers. Even if Sri Lanka had a pace attack of England's standard, there'd still be no talk of leaving Murali out. This a player who is so good that he is unconcerned by trivialities such as the pitch. He turned the ball appreciably, both his off-spinner and the doosra. If he gets five wickets they should carve his name into the honours board with a bloody great chisel.

Maybe we're just impressed by any off-spinner having spent our time marvelling at Peter Such's 'arm ball', Robert Croft's 'quicker one' and Gareth Batty's 'one that goes straight on'. Somehow we don't think that's it. He's also the nicest bloke in cricket - possibly the world.

Marcus Trescothick's hundred against Sri Lanka yesterday

England's day - and therefore our day - was great. Marcus Trescothick proved his worth with a century, although anyone who doesn't know Marcus Trescothick's worth isn't worth asking about anything.

Mark Nicholas pointed to Trescothick's foot movement on the new Channel 5 highlights last night, saying that Trescothick was 'really striding into the ball'. As far as we could tell, he was planting his feet as much as ever. People just say he's moving his feet more when he's scoring runs. When he gets out they point to his lack of foot movement, but there's rarely any difference. People just see what they want to see. With Trescothick you might as well accept that it's mostly down to his hand-eye coordination. If he nicks one, it won't be because of a lack of foot movement. There were enough thundering off-drives yesterday from a standing position to prove that.

What is it with everyone and Marcus Trescothick's 'personal reasons' anyway? He scores a century and suddenly a whole host of people visit this post. We feel kind of bad that new visitors will suffer abuse as part of their first experience of King Cricket, but hey, what you going to do?

Sajid Mahmood to make his debut

He's in. Sajid Mahmood's in. This makes it much easier to keep track of him as one of our Ones To Watch.

Other than that, Liam Plunkett's playing and so's Monty Panesar. Overall, we'd say this is the right team. Jon Lewis would have done well, which would have made it that much harder to drop him afterwards and that's what England would have wanted to do. We're also a strong believer in always having a spinner. No matter what the conditions, if a partnership gets going a change in bowling style could make the all-important breakthrough. Might Panesar be in for good now? Don't suggest it to Ashley Giles.

There's a certain amount of blooding for the future going on here, but these guys are all good enough to play for England. Let's see who makes the most of their opportunity.

It's no more likely to rain now than at any other time

We've read quite a few non-British reports referring to May being a month of rain in the UK. We'd like to put our international readers straight.

May is a damp month in the UK. It's not a rainy month. It's not yet very warm so when it does rain the moisture stays around, that's all. It's not unseasonally sunny at the moment or anything like that. By and large it's equally sunny or cloudy throughout the year.

Here's the evidence. You'll notice that May actually has less rainfall than July or August.

We just needed to get that off our chest.

It's the big day

Okay, we're starting with a 'hurrah'. We know that we overdo that, but it's entirely justified here.

Hurrah. England are playing. In a Test match. In England. It doesn't get any better than this. We've managed to get into work extra early because we were so excited about the cricket that we couldn't sleep. The irony for our employers is that despite our lengthier working day, we aren't really going to get anything done (nor tomorrow, nor possibly Monday) because we'll be checking the score in twelve different places.

Our predictions:

At various times during the day colleagues will walk in and ask: "What's the score?" Upon being told that England are 100-2, they'll laugh, say England are rubbish and tell us to give up hope.

Two weeks later they'll complain that we aren't being 'patriotic' for the football World Cup because we haven't painted the cross of St George on all of our stuff and because we haven't said anything racist about any other nation.

Sanath Jayasuriya DOESN'T retire

Unbelievable. Benevolent Uncle Sanath has been persuaded to reverse his retirement decision. On top of that, he's on his way to the UK and he'll most likely appear in the second Test.

How do people reach these decisions. It used to be that a retirement was a big deal not entered into lightly. After all, it's kind of like a death. The death of the last remnants of your youth if it's a cricket retirement. Nowadays it's just an excuse for a weekend off.

We're going to retire from writing this website...

...okay we're back again.

We just spent a good couple of minutes trying to work out whether that joke was funnier with the '...okay we're back again' part on the same line or with it two lines beneath. We overlooked the fact that it isn't funny in either position.

Then, rather than deleting the so-called joke, we wrote about how we'd spent time refining it. Then we published what we'd written.

Tomorrow on King Cricket: We tell you about how we're typing words down while sitting at a computer.

Alex Loudon's doosra

Alex Loudon's got a doosra. We could have a doosra. In fact, we have got a doosra. We learned it with an apple about ten minutes ago. We're expecting an England call any minute. England are desperate for a spinner. England are desperate for a wicket-taking spinner. England are desperate for a 'mystery' spinner. The doosra's the shortcut to making yourself that person.

Alex Loudon took 5-109 today. We wonder how many of them were taken with the doosra. Continually saying doosra is making us faintly nauseous, or maybe that's the uncertainty surrounding our "career". Yes, the inverted commas are entirely justified.

Simon Jones' recovery

We swear that we saw Simon Jones this morning. He was emptying the bins. He'd cleverly disguised himself by wearing glasses, but we swear it was Simon Jones.

Maybe he was offering some tips about reverse swing to the refuse collectors of south Manchester. If an England cricketer came and worked with us, we'd be so desperate to ask them a million questions that we'd be struck dumb. We'd sit there wide-eyed and ever-so-slightly vibrating with over-stimulation.

Then we'd tell them to leave for their own good. We're not sure that our employers have the power to terminate England players' contracts, but we get the impression that they'd try. They'd try and contract the work out somewhere else.

More intelligent people than us can try and make some point about cheap labour and Kolpak players in the comments. We're far too busy idly speculating about whether we're going to be made redundant or not. It would be a shame if we did: The internet connection's really good here.

Cricket is better than football

It is. Cricket is better than football. Yesterday we were toying with the idea of setting up a website for the football World Cup. Our niche was going to be ‘person who is fairly indifferent about the whole thing’. But we realised that we couldn’t really be bothered writing it.

That’s because cricket is better than football. Other than goalkeepers, everybody does much the same thing in football. In cricket, you’ve got batsmen, bowlers and wicketkeepers for a start. Plus you’ve got all the different styles of batsman and all the different styles of bowler. Even within the different bowling categories some have skills that others don’t – reverse swing, the doosra, the flipper or whatever. Add into that the fact that everyone has to bat and everyone has to field. And then there’s the way the game changes according to the weather and the pitch and it’s abundantly clear: Cricket is better than football.

Everyone in cricket’s much nicer as well, don’t you think? Just about everyone in cricket is fundamentally likable. We can’t think of a single footballer we’d like to talk to. In the cricket world we can only think of Matthew Hayden who we wouldn’t like to talk to. Although we could try and explain to him why he’s much more rubbish than he thinks he is. Yes. There you go. There isn’t a single cricketer who we don’t want to talk to.

So, to recap: Cricket is better than football.

England v Sri Lanka, first Test at Lords

Is everyone excited yet? Have you all prepared your Sri Lankan themed parties for Friday night? We're making a Sri Lankan curry. We're very excited.

Team-wise England's hasn't spurred us into commenting. Alastair Cook's batting at three which is indicative of a change in the pecking order. Ian Bell might get a chance to put that right if England play four seamers and no spinner, but realistically both Bell and Cook will go as soon as Vaughan gets back. We'd like to know if Michael Vaughan's still a good batsman. We can't really remember. We're sure he is.

Bowling-wise we're a bit nervous that the so-called 'horses for courses' approach will see Jon Lewis preferred over Sajid Mahmood. Jon Lewis has got a faintly equine face now that we think about it, so that phrase is appropriate. We don't mind Jon Lewis at all, but we think it's about time that Saj got started on his international career. He's been hovering around the A team for long enough now. It's time to see what he's made of. We're betting that he's made of unobtainium and not flesh and bones like the rest of us.

We'd quite like to see Monty Panesar get a game as well. We hate teams with no spinners. Variety is the spice of life and all that. Although to be honest, brown mustard seeds are the spice of life this week. Brown mustard seeds and paprika and heaps of chilli. If anyone's got any pandanus leaf, incidentally, could they possibly drop it off prior to Friday night. We'll make do without, but we're a bit nervous that it could be the most Sri Lankan ingredient. We don't want to water down the Sri Lankandom.

Mark Ramprakash was never going to be a great Test cricketer. Steve Waugh was.

Mark Ramprakash eventually fell short of a triple century last week, but it was still a whopping innings and journalists up and down the land dusted off their ‘Ramprakash could have been an England Great’ stories. Well we’ve had it. Mark Ramprakash couldn’t have been one of England’s Greats. How do we know that? Because he wasn’t one. It stands to reason.

That’s simplistic (not for the first time). Given better support by selectors and management Mark Ramprakash could have been a better Test player, but not a great one. It’s indicative of an ‘if only’ mentality which has no place in top level sport. The ingredients of a Test class batsmen aren’t just technique and timing. More than either of those it’s mentality and determination.

Take Steve and Mark Waugh. Mark had all the shots (and then some). On his day he made batting look easier than sighing at your own worthlessness. Steve on the other hand looked borderline ugly at the crease. Who was the better batsman? It was Steve, unquestionably. He scored more runs at a greater average and inevitably scored them when they were most needed. He made no excuses and he made sure he made the most of every opportunity.

Steve didn’t need the support of anyone because he made bloody certain that everyone else needed him. People say that he made the most of what he had, which is tantamount to patronising him. In reality, making the most of what you have is an absolute necessity as an international batsman.

To say: ‘If only Ramprakash had made more of what he had, because he had the talent,’ is akin to saying: ‘If only Matthew Hoggard had more natural batting talent, because he makes the most of what he has’. Mark Ramprakash made the least of what he had. He wasn’t an underachiever. What happened in Mark Ramprakash’s Test career happened for a reason.

Indulgent straw-clutching about Rob Key

Rob Key may have only hit 63, but it was still the top score in the England A v Sri Lanka match. It's a shame that he couldn't have reached a century because people only really pay attention to batsmen when they get to three figures.

Last year Alastair Cook hit an eye-catching double hundred against Australia in a three-day game. That was in a match when three other batsmen hit sizable hundreds though. This match against Sri Lanka was a low-scoring affair and Rob Key's contribution was invaluable.

Who are we kidding? 214 is a lot more runs than 63.

We're part serious. We don't know if you all appreciate that our Rob Key fixation is based on more than just his appearance. He really is a top drawer batsman. We're really looking forward to seeing him in an England cap again.

Rob Key posts:
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Matt Prior settles back into county cricket

We didn't get enough sleep last night and when we're in a bad mood it tends to come out in our writing. Ordinarily we expend most of our buoyant good humour into these posts and what's left is a surly, mournful shell of a person. If we expended any good humour today we'd find ourselves irretrievably low, so we'll keep this brief and then go and eat a banana. Bananas are full of something that makes you happy, apparently.

We reckoned on Matt Prior taking his chance in the one-day series in India (a link is notable by its absence). We were quite wrong. He played his first championship match this week though and it's probably not overstating things to say that he pretty much won Sussex the match.

When he came to the crease in the first innings, they were 115-5, but Prior set about the bowling and was last man out for 124. In the second innings he hit 55 not out as Sussex scored the necessary 195 to win. It's good to see that he's not hopeless.

South Africa v New Zealand: Another Ntini embiggenment

We're not quite sure what to write about Makhaya Ntini now. He took 5-35 against New Zealand today and we pretty much expected it of him. It's a sign of a great bowler when you expect them to take wickets rather than hope that they will.

But how to honour this? We've pretty much exhausted all our usual options. We've said that he's 'ace' and even gone as far as to say: 'No, really. He's actually ace,' in case somebody missed it the first time.

We thought about writing 'strike bowler' sixteen times and accompanying it with a picture of Ntini looking fierce, but that's a bit surreal and doesn't really offer the reader a lot. In the end we settled for writing about how we didn't know what to write about Makhaya Ntini. Not that he's too good for words (he's not Waqar Younis). It's just that we've already used them all and we don't like repeating ourself, despite what you might gather from reading our stuff regularly.

Rob Key hits fifty against Sri Lanka

It's Friday, the sun's shining, we're going to a beer festival later and Rob Key's hit fifty against Sri Lanka.

That whole 'isn't life wonderful' line would have gone better if Rob hadn't ruined it by getting out for 63. We're still accepting entries for Rob Key songs, incidentally. If you're unsure whether to post something or not, let us just say that we will NEVER tire of songs about Rob Key, no matter what the quality. NEVER.

That picture's not remotely contemporary, but it does explain the genius of Rob Key quite well. Look at the technique. It takes true skill to look that disinterested.

Back in the England A v Sri Lanka match, keep your eyes on Mr Point-to-prove Chris Read later today.

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Let's all become Sri Lankophiles

We love the idea of a cricket tour as an EVENT. Life should take on a tinge of the touring team. That's the magic of cricket. We're going to get to know these Sri Lankan players better over the next few weeks and we think that we should all get to know Sri Lanka better as well.

In the spirit of this, we've decided to try and Sri Lankivise King Cricket a bit. We were thinking about telling you about the time we were in Sri Lanka and a friendly troupe of langur monkeys first accepted us and then came to worship us as a sort of deity, but friends have warned us that our natural tendency to get a bit over-excited is brought to the fore during the telling of this tale, so we'll leave it there.

Instead we bring you this: A low quality photograph of a bottle of Lion Stout taken by the Scientician. Lion Stout is about 8%, comes in a whopping 660ml bottle and is actually really rather nice. Let's all drink Lion Stout throughout Sri Lanka's tour.

If you have any chunks of information about Sri Lanka or its culture then please enrich us all.

We missed some hundreds - Mark Ramprakash's primarily

That crept up on us. We try on top of things, but a whole load of stuff happened while we weren't looking. Mostly Mark Ramprakash happened.

We were checking the Surrey score quite frequently because we were monitoring Mark Butcher's score. That sounds a bit pompous - we were evading work and staring at scorecards. Anyway, Mark Ramprakash is on 276 not out. We could tell you all about Mark Ramprakash but we'll agree some shared knowledge here: gifted, under-performing at Test level, maybe a bit highly-strung. We don't like highly-strung people. They start to make us feel edgy. They must be overly-worried and panicking for a reason right?

Secondly, Andrew Strauss is on an unbeaten hundred after failing in the first innings and Ian Bell's on 72 not out while we're basking in England batsmen's good form.

Finally, Matt Prior hit 124. Matt Prior's one of our all-too-frequently appearing Ones To Watch. We can't be bothered copying the link in again. It's in the sidebar on the left if you've never been here before. He was batting at seven though. We're not sure about that. He makes a great number seven, don't get us wrong. He's quick-scoring and he WILL bat there for England one day. But seven for England is a world of difference from seven for Sussex. Maybe he kept getting caught in the toilet every time it was his turn to bat. That's what it must have been.

A Bilal Shafayat hundred

Bilal Shafayat hit a hundred against Somerset today - 101 to be precise. We can't wait to see tiny Bilal Shafayat batting with walking skyscraper Will Jefferson for England. The contrast in heights would be, er, significant. If there's one thing we love, it's a discrepancy in height between two individuals standing in close proximity.

Anyway, that's Shafayat's second century of the season. We're giving ourselves a big tick and a gold star for being so painfully right about him. If we could fill a bath with essence of correctness we'd go home and wallow in it tonight. Unfortunately, correctness is an abstract concept and not a liquid. A big silent boo to correctness everyone. (The silent boo is vaguely explained in this post.)

Jon Lewis makes a mess of Sri Lanka's top order

Where are we up to with Jon Lewis? Anybody? Are we taking pleasure in the performances of an honest county professional? Are we swayed into thinking he should play for England? Are we admiring his expert use of early season conditions yet accepting that he doesn't have the variation to trouble the world's best batsmen on flat pitches?

Probably all of the above. He's taken 4-20 for England A against Sri Lanka at the moment. The question is whether after England's spate of pace-bowling injuries he'll get a place for the first Test. Our natural inclination is to say no and that a younger bowler will be blooded for the future, but the very fact that he's in the A team indicates that the selectors have him in mind.

Assuming that Flintoff, Hoggard and Mahmood take up the first three seam bowling slots, that leaves us with a choice between Plunkett and Lewis, it would seem. Both of them are playing in this A team game. Plunkett's the future and the King Cricket philosophy (we can have a philosophy) always errs on the side of youth. However, you can't argue with Lewis's form at the minute.

We're going for Plunkett but not being all that bothered if the selectors go for Lewis. We're so strong-minded and opinionated. Bet you're glad you read this for cricketing insight. What's that? You only read the bits about Transformers? Duly noted.

Pakistan to operate squad rotation

We said that squad rotation was inevitable and Pakistan will be the first to practice it under that name. Australia frequently rest players during one-day series and Brian Lara recently stated that West Indies players would be rested in the unlikely event that they took an impregnable lead in a series. Here's Jagadish's view on that.

Pakistan are going the whole hog, though. Inzamam said: "We have 75 playing days before the World Cup and the danger of losing some of our players to fatigue and fitness problems is real. This is why we have decided to adopt a rotation policy to preserve our players for next year's big tournament."

We're not too pleased about this. It's one thing to give players international experience when you're in a position of strength, but the subtext of this is that there is too much cricket for any one player to appear in all of their nation's matches. International cricket and Test cricket in particular is meant to be the best against the best. A Test match is a big deal. When we were young, it used to feel like years between matches and each was a massive event. These days they're more common than the foggy feeling we experience when we haven't yet had coffee of a morning.

Just about everybody thinks there's too much international cricket, but we're all funding the game by watching the TV or whatever. We're not likely to stop, so there doesn't really look to be an end to this. It's a shame because the quality of the game will suffer and we'll be left with a substandard 'product'. We don't like calling cricket a product, but that's the sentiment that's causing this.

We call on supporters the world over to boycott all of the rubbish and unnecessary series, starting with the Champions' Trophy, which is likely to feature approximately zero 'champions' after squad rotation's done its work.

Note: Our deep-rooted hypocrisy dictates that we will still cover the Champions' Trophy. We'll cover it in an 'Under-19 World Cup' kind of a way though, not an 'Ashes' kind of way. That'll teach it.

A Marcus Trescothick hundred

Marcus Trescothick has currently scored 100 of Somerset's total of 173-7. That's the kind of innings that impresses us.

It may be that the rest of Somerset's batting line-up had too much breakfast and has been fatally sluggish as a consequence, but more likely Marcus Trescothick is just a considerably better batsman than the rest of them and has managed to deal with a pitch and conditions favouring the bowlers.

With a Test on the horizon and a slightly makeshift England team taking shape, this is reassuring. Previously we claimed to be averse to reading much into 'form'. Now we're doing the opposite. Do you ever get the feeling that we just see things how we want to see them? You'd be right.

A Tom Smith scouting report in the Guardian

Steve James has covered Tom Smith for the Guardian. We're strangely pleased that we were there when he first drew attention.

Steve James doesn't make the mistake of hiding his cricketing opinions between rubbish jokes. Either that or Steve James makes the mistake of forgetting to write any rubbish jokes within which to hide his cricketing opinions. Either way, his article's here.

Steve James says that Tom Smith bowls 'a heavy ball'. We're taking this as confirmation of our own view that he's 'brisk'. It's much the same isn't it? Maybe we'll create a scale to measure bowling speeds. We like scales. Is 'brisk' faster or slower than 'bowling a heavy ball'?

England batsmen find form... poor form

This round of County Championship matches has been going for, ooh, 45 minutes and already Andrew Strauss and Ian Bell are out in their respective matches. We'll keep our eyes on Marcus Trescothick.

If you were the kind of person who read much into form prior to Test matches, you'd be a bit nervous. We're not that sort of person. We're the sort that says that England's batsmen are saving their best. That's the way it works right? You've only so much 'best' to go round, so you have to budget carefully and allocate it accordingly.

England bowlers wanted. Do you have arms? Have you heard of cricket? Apply within.

It wouldn't be the start of an England Test series without desperate scouring for players.

Michael Vaughan's still suffering from dropsy. Ashley Giles has got Crohn's disease. Steve Harmison's got lupus. Simon Jones' artificial limb has got woodworm. James Anderson's really really hungover and won't be fit for at least another month.

There's always a silver lining though. At least there is in our world. In this case it's called Sajid Mahmood, one of our Ones To Watch and one of about a million cricketers who we fanatically champion. He looks set to make his Test debut with Liam Plunkett filling the other pace-bowling vacancy. Plus, if Plunkett plays there's a greater chance that Monty Panesar will play as well. Result.

The knock-on effect is being felt in Rob Key's A team as well as Jon Lewis and Stuart Broad have been called up following Mahmood's withdrawal from that team. Of course all of that pales into insignificance besides Rob Key's latest opportunity to dazzle the world with his unparalleled genius.

The A team v Sri Lanka match starts tomorrow and ROB KEY'S PLAYING. Let's all send him positive vibes... Do it... DO IT... You don't know how..? Just try.

A totally random selection of C&G Trophy individual scores

We don't know how to deal with this year's C&G Trophy. The first phase is in the form of two separate leagues. A northern one and a southern one. The winners of each of the leagues meets in a final. And that's it. Within a couple of weeks half the teams won't be playing for anything other than pride. Weird.

Plus, they played a whole bunch of games yesterday, which we didn't cover because we were otherwise engaged and now there's been a whole round today as well, which we haven't commented on. There's a roast in the oven which needs attending to in a moment and what we're saying is that you're not going to get much out of us.

Mark Butcher narrowly missed his fourth successive fifty after two in the County Championship and one yesterday. He made 49 in Surrey's win over another county from the South who we can't even be bothered naming, even though it would have taken less time to find out than to write this explanation as to why we haven't named them.

Mark Cosgrove hit 75 off 57 balls for Glamorgan. He recently played his first one-day international and hopefully he'll be the natural heir to Darren Lehmann as Australia's classy fat batsman. Incidentally, Darren Lehmann is still Australia's best batsman bar Ricky Ponting and if he'd played in the Ashes, we think that Australia may have shaded it. May have... No, probably not, actually. We're not giving them that.

What else? Shahid Afridi's playing for Ireland, which is weird and inexplicable if you're talking to a football fan. Rob Key's still in the worst form of his career and we blame ourselves and his new slim figure. Kevin Pietersen hit 98 off 74 balls. Sajid Mahmood took 2-17 and Tom Smith went one better with 3-17.

See. Lots of information. Precious little entertainment. And we've broken both our writing rules. Namely, 'little' and 'often'. All said and done, this is a bit of a disaster.