Richie Benaud signing books

We have a friend who works in Waterstone's in Manchester. Richie Benaud's there today signing books. Meanwhile we're snowed under with work at a job from which we're being made redundant - work that one out.

We're insanely jealous that our friend's going to get to meet the world's greatest living human and probably won't even appreciate it. It's probably for the best that we're not there however. We would almost certainly say something weird. We don't know what it would be. We never do.

You can buy his book, My Spin on Cricket, here, or if you're a bit mental and don't mind spending extra money on what is essentially the same thing, you can get a hardback version. Personally, we recommend getting a signed copy because there's every chance that he touched it with his other hand while he was writing his name.

Geraint Jones dropped for Chris Read

That's a bit of a surprise. Not a massive surprise, but a surprise nonetheless. England's selectors seem to have deemed Geraint Jones 'out of form' rather than 'not up to standard'. The cure is apparently to play some county cricket.

With only a couple more Tests and some one-day matches to play before the Ashes, it would be highly surprising indeed if Chris Read didn't start the series Down Under gloved and squatting. Geraint Jones will still go, but as understudy.

You have to take your chances in international cricket and this could actually be Read's last chance to forge a career in international cricket despite his relative youth. Good luck to him. We've never held strong views about England's wicketkeepers, but taking Read in isolation, he was dropped because of his poor batting and he went and sorted it out, scoring heavily in first-class cricket. We've great respect for that. He could easily have let the disappointment get to him and effectively given up his Test career, but he didn't.

It could be that his determination and mental approach will stand him in better stead than the improvement in his batting. A bit of steel and resolve never harmed any batsman and Read's had to go through a hard and draining process to get back in this side. We reckon he'll be a tougher prospect for opposing bowlers. Hopefully his keeping's still immaculate. It would balance out the irony of Jones being dropped for his batting if Read were subsequently dropped for his keeping. This really shouldn't happen though.

Monty Panesar - underdog/hero

It could be that Monty Panesar's playing us all for fools. We all think that he's a liability in the field and also with the bat, but maybe he's just pretending. He seems a canny sort of guy. Perhaps he's worked out the most effective route the hearts of English supporters.

The English love an English world-beater, but more than that, they love an underdog. Monty Panesar has neatly positioned himself with a foot in both camps. He can't catch and he can't bat so people take him to their hearts. Then you put the ball in his hand and suddenly he's some sort of sorceror. Having been at the Test for day three, as Panesar beat the innards out of Pakistan's top order, we can testify that the level of affection is almost frightening.

We can't claim to be impartial either. We're just as much in his thrall. Much as Mark Nicholas makes us wince during Channel 5's highlights package, we can't help but agree with him that there's no finer sight than Monty's wicket celebration. 'Delight' is the most accurate word and it's infectious.

That Monty Panesar finished with worse second innings figures than Steve Harmison proves how deceiving statistics can be. Panesar took out five of the top six, including The Big Three, while Harmison merely polished off the tail, albeit efficiently and reassuringly - England sometimes have a problem in this department.

It got slightly lost in our giddy appreciation of Steve Harmison, but Panesar's first innings performance was equally important. Imagine if Jamie Dalrymple had played. Steve Harmison might have ended up with nine wickets, but it would have been 9-100. When Panesar got Mohammad Yousuf, that was crucial. You can never say how things would have gone otherwise, but that really set things in motion as wickets fell either side of lunch.

During the match an Australian friend of ours contacted us to say: "Yeah, but can he catch?" We responded by saying that he didn't need to, which was a massive exaggeration, but which is more important, his catching or his bowling? We reckon his fielding flaws are exaggerated anyway. At least that's what we're telling ourself.

How much more impressed with Monty Panesar's bowling could we be? The answer, of course, is 'none'... None more impressed...

Cross-posted at Cricket 24x7

Sangakkara and Jayawardene

We hope that England's game follows a similar pattern to the Sri Lanka v South Africa match. Sri Lanka bowled out South Africa for 169. Then, after losing two wickets there was a monumental partnership between Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene. England bowled out Pakistan for 119 and now they're two wickets down. A monumental partnership is the logical next step. That's what we'd do next.

However, with due respect, Kevin Pietersen and Alastair Cook are not yet what their Sri Lankan counterparts are. Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene are both ace. We can't be bothered adding to that. Sangakkara's on 122 not out and Jayawardene is on 114 not out. It speaks for itself and the fact that it's no surprise says just as much.

We watched Sri Lanka against the West Indies in Kandy once. Sangakkara and Jayawardene both fell cheaply and we were 'treated' to a day of Hashan Tillekeratne. To amuse ourself we dabbed paint on the outfield and watched to see whether it dried quicker than the grass grew. Then we realised that it was impossible to compare because we were measuring entirely different things. Then Sky filmed us for a bit. Then it rained.

Steve Harmison's back!

As in returned. He's not got ankylo-

No. No time for that. (See here and here.) Steve Harmison's back in the sense that Steve Harmison the fast-bowler who takes wickets is playing again, rather than the guy who bowls all those wides.

Have we mentioned how much we love Steve Harmison before? He's just taken 6-19 against Pakistan and he seriously is the only English bowler who can do that. Harmison, at his best, is unstoppable. Like a giant truck ploughing downhill with no brakes and a demented demon behind the wheel who's no intention of even trying to stop. And someone's pushing the truck as well, just in case.

All together (to the tune of Go West by the Pet Shop Boys): Ste-ven. Steven Har-mis-on. Ste-ven. Steven Har-mis-on.

Are you absolutely bricking it? Are you an Australian batsman, by any chance? Your rock-hard pitches over there might come back to haunt you. While we're on that subject, a quick hat-tip to Peter Marron, the groundsman at Old Trafford: Good work.

We'd also like to point out how rarely we use exclamation marks. Today is an exclamation mark day.

Three players who can't bat are playing for South Africa!

Three! When did this last happen? Has this ever happened before?

In the first Test against Sri Lanka in Colombo, South Africa have picked Andre Nel, Makhaya Ntini and Dale Steyn, none of whom can bat. South Africa like to bat down to number 10 - at least. This is like an actual, normal cricket team, rather than some wear-down-the-opposition's-bowlers sadistic experiment.

What next? Will New Zealand pick a middle-order batsman who doesn't bowl a bit of medium-pace. Will an England player neglect to put his hand up and come to the party? Will we stop asking rhetorical questions?

This year's Old Trafford Test

We'll be attending on the third day and we're really looking forward to it. There's a different atmosphere at England v Pakistan games and that's part of the charm. We're expecting a good number of Pakistan followers and plenty of noise. Hopefully the authorities will be lenient when it comes to drums and other instruments. We're sure that the players will be able to tolerate the appreciation of the crowd.

As far as the conditions go, on the ground it could be Perth. The pitch is the hardest in England for years and it's barely rained in Manchester for about two months, which is pretty much unprecedented. Overhead, the forecast says it'll be dry and a comfortable temperature, but staging an international cricket match is usually enough to make the heavens open.

Cross-posted at Cricket 24x7

Last year's Old Trafford Test

It's that time of year when the cricket world descends on our town for the Old Trafford Test. Strangely no-one ever wants to stay with us. The offer's open to players from both sides. Inzy, if you fancy relaxing after a hard day in the field, you're always welcome round ours. We don't have to do anything major. We could just sit and watch telly. Maybe have a bite to eat.

Last year's Old Trafford Test was remarkable for both the players and the crowd. We were working irregular hours last year and were still at home when the fifth day started. Watching on television, we weren't surprised that people were being turned away from the ground. However we were astounded by the volume of people. The official figure put the number of people turned away from the ground on that fifth day at one hundred million - almost double the population of the UK.

Cricket fans in the UK experienced mixed feelings as a result of this. It was great that cricket was so popular, but also slightly frightening. Kind of like being the quiet kid in school and then when you do speak everyone pays attention because if you're bothering to say something, it must be worth saying.

Well luckily the cricket on that last day was well worth tuning in for, even if you were excluded from the ground. Australia retained an outside chance of reaching their target all day; England slowly whittled away Australia's batsmen until they needed only one wicket in the last over; and Ricky Ponting produced a staggering innings under colossal pressure - the innings finally convinced us that Ponting was a notch above the rest of Australia's class-oozing batting line-up; that he was something special indeed.

That England failed to take that final wicket and that Australia failed to reach their target was beside the point. Any cricket fan knows that there's not necessarily disappointment in a drawn game. If we get even a fraction of the tension of that match at this year's Old Trafford Test we'll be in for some fun.

Cross-posted at Cricket 24x7

James Bruce, Hampshire, bowling average

This is more like it. We barely know anything about James Bruce. Unfortunately, nor does anyone else it seems. At least no-one else in the world of media. At least not that they're telling us.

James Bruce has taken 26 wickets at 23.30 so far this season, although Cricinfo says that he's fast-medium, so we're not all that interested. Having said that, it also says that Sajid Mahmood is fast-medium and we consider him 'fast' so we'll reserve judgement.

While making a really half-hearted attempt to research James Bruce we found out that one of his colleagues at Hampshire is called James Tomlinson. We used to be mates with a different James Tomlinson when we were about ten. We used to play cricket using a fire grate as a set of stumps. His sister played like Chris Tavare: "If it's not going to hit the stumps, I don't have to hit it".

James Tomlinson's dad said that we were going to play for England. We were greatly encouraged. We're sorry that we let you down James Tomlinson's dad. We really are.

Sajid Mahmood, Lancashire, bowling average

Seriously, this is getting to be a bit tiresome now. We were hoping for more surprises than this.

Sajid Mahmood's taken 28 wickets at 22.82.

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We hate linking to stuff. Find King Cricket instances of Sajid Mahmood yourself. He's all over this site like our time spent in this job is all over. That simile doesn't quite work, but any excuse to moan like a five-year-old in a hot car. (That one works.)

Chris Read, Nottinghamshire, batting average

Ooh. Controversial. Drawing attention to the achievements of Chris Read. Does this mean that we're a 'Readite' as opposed to a 'Jonesian' or a 'Prioranian'? No. Not really. We're just pointing out the facts.

Chris Read averages 48 so far this season and he's hit three hundreds. That's really pretty good. If we were Chris Read, we'd be pinning our hopes on a Geraint Jones injury. It's only a matter of time. Geraint Jones does play for England, after all.

This debate is duller than the 'specialist spinner or spinner/batsman' debate. We've written about it before as well.

Here's a post where we write too much about something we don't have particularly strong feelings about, before concluding something that we don't even believe.

James Benning, Surrey, batting average

It's the 'pointing out cricketers who we've already pointed out' special here at King Cricket. Next up, James Benning of Surrey who averages 53.50 with two hundreds thus far this season.

It was, what, the day before yesterday when we last wrote about him, so again we're not going to add anything to this post.

We're really going to have to try harder. What if we're losing our powers? There's only one solution: Abandon even the faintest pretence of work in order to immerse ourself in the world of cricket still further. We're going to hold a home-made cricket bat in our left hand while we read all the million-or-so pages of Cricinfo. We're also going to chant 'howzat, howzat' while we do it and we'll get everyone to call us 'Gary Sobers' for the rest of the day. We'll take a break at 1pm for forty minutes and then have another break at 3.40pm, but only for twenty minutes. Then we'll probably work a bit late because we haven't been working quite quickly enough. Unless it's raining, in which case we'll go home.

Will that be enough?

Ed Joyce, Middlesex, batting average

Ed Joyce is averaging 55.81 this season with three first-class hundreds. That's pretty much more of the same as far as Joyce is concerned.

We can't really add much to our previous Ed Joyce post, which is bizarre, because we didn't really say anything about him in that one either. It's made us really keen to see him bat though. We want to say things like: "He's a class act" and "he oozes class" and "he gave an absolute masterclass". It would be a shame if he didn't have any class.

Ed Joyce: Carry on.

Rikki Clarke, Surrey, batting average

It takes a while to get below the non-English players and all the aged pros in the first-class batting averages. The first noteworty name after that is that of Rikki Clarke of Surrey. Rikki Clarke averages 57.70 with the bat after 11 first-class games this season and has hit three hundreds.

Rikki Clarke's been mentioned in passing a few times with Andy Flintoff being out. He was never going to get picked, but it is strange the way he's dropped away since making his Test debut a couple of years ago. It goes without saying that he's a better player now than then. His career first-class batting average is a decent 40.56.

We think it's about time he got back into England's disaster area of a one-day team. In truth he's just the sort of player who should have been playing since his debut, gaining experience. England always want to choose some young players for the one-day team and stick with them. Then they can never make their minds up which young players to stick with and chop and change them for four years until, lo, it's the World Cup again and the team's in terrible shape.

Rikki Clarke has even come on in leaps and bounds in the appearance stakes.

County cricket averages

This was something that we meant to do during the break for Twenty20, but completely forgot about. To think that in an interview last week we cited our organisational abilities as a strength that overcame our bad memory. Our bad memory is our one weakness when people ask us in an interview. We're always tempted to add 'our achilles heel' or 'kryptonite' or something to our list of weaknesses to spice things up a bit, but it seems to be frowned upon in an interview situation.

Anyway, to get to the point of this post, we're going to have a look at the batting and bowling averages in county cricket at (just after) the mid-way point in the season, pick out some youngsters and then maybe write some words about them. Links will appear below in due course.

Rikki Clarke's batting
Ed Joyce's batting
James Benning's batting
Chris Read's batting
Sajid Mahmood's bowling average
James Bruce's bowling average

International Cricket Captain 2006 by Empire Interactive

They've updated the database!

That's about it. You can play Twenty20 as well, but it's basically the same as we described before. We're still thinking about buying it, even though it's the EXACT SAME GAME as before but with one different competition and some different names.

If you're as stupid as we are, click here, buy the game and enjoy yourself for a bit. Then get annoyed, but carry on playing. Then get depressed, but still carry on playing. Then cry every morning at your own worthlessness, but still keep playing.

The problem is there's always the chance that the young player you've vested so much in will become the next Don Bradman. He won't, but there's that chance. Then it takes about three months to find out that actually he's just the next Jason Gallian. By that point you've a young Malcolm Marshall waiting in the wings. And so on.

More cricket games

James Benning - pinch hitter

Someone's making a name for themself as a pinch-hitter. The name they're making is 'James Benning', which is, coincidentally, already the name of Surrey's pinch-hitting opener, James Benning - the man who's making a name for himself.

Not sure where we're going with that, so we'll start a new paragraph and pretend that nothing's happened. James Benning hit 71 off 51 balls as Surrey waddled past Kent's total of 229 in the new Pro40 League last night.

James Benning's been doing a bit of this of late. He had a few decent Twenty20 knocks and he also hit 189 not out off 146 balls against Gloucestershire in the C&G Trophy in June. He's 23-years-old and maybe worth keeping an eye on. He certainly seems to have it in him to bat quite spectacularly. Let's see if he can add that all-important and all-too-rare quality, consistency, to the equation.

Sajid Mahmood will probably play

People are going to start getting the wrong impression about Sajid Mahmood. He ended up getting dropped at the end of the series against Sri Lanka and then had a bit of a disaster in the one-day series that followed. That's not what Sajid Mahmood's like. Sajid Mahmood's actually good.

By all accounts the Old Trafford pitch is as hard as that guy we saw drinking some of the Ganges in Varanasi. It doesn't get any harder than that. This (the pitch) will suit Mahmood who's tall and quick. Plus it's his home ground. He doesn't live under the hover cover, you understand. We just mean that he plays for Lancashire.

Anyway, all we're saying is that we're going to be spending much of the match hoping that Saj shows what he's made of. (Primarily water).

Andy Flintoff's recovery

Is it coincidence that England players don't recover from injuries? Mirroring Michael Vaughan's breakdown during recovery, Andy Flintoff will now need surgery on his ankle. See also Ashley Giles and Simon Jones for just about his entire career.

The thinking seems to go like this: 'There's a chance we might be able to get him back to full fitness quite quickly if we give him some rest and then get him to strengthen whatever's wrong with him. That hasn't worked - let's do some surgery. Better make it exploratory surgery. Let's clean him up and we might be able to minimise the time he's out. Okay. That hasn't worked. Seems like we've wasted eight weeks/months. Better do that proper full-blown surgery we've been talking about since day one'.

That's a simplification obviously and we don't actually lay claim to having even the faintest grasp of sports treatment. It's a branch of science after all and as we've previously mentioned, we can't 'do' science. Surely the phrase 'proper full-blown surgery' should tell you that. Our worry is that decisions on treatment are being based on recovery times, with pressure being applied to get players back as soon as possible.

We once ran a half-marathon with a torn hamstring. It bloody hurt. You should make sure you're fully recovered before competing.

Should we end this post with the story about when we tried to do the splits and slipped, as inspired by the photo above, or should we end with a complete non-joke about some other cricketers who are always injured?

Why is Pro40 so scary?

Anybody? Why is Pro40 so scary? It's the same as ordinary one-day cricket only it's forty overs a side. Why does that make it so frightening?

Hopefully there will be actual skeletons/skellingtons playing, although from this promotional picture it looks like it'll just be a skull detached from its body. At least the skull's relative immobility will be offset by permitting it to wield two bats.

Cricketers are cool

We had a job interview yesterday at a phenomenally famous sportswear manufacturers. We arrived far too early like the nervous person with no common sense that we are. While we waited, we read a book about the company. It highlighted all the sportspeople down the years who have worn this brand. There were loads of them, but there was not one cricketer.

How can this be? There must have been one cool cricketer who could have worn this company's footwear.

Was W G Grace not cool?

Is Rob Key not cool?

Seriously: There were high-jumpers in this book. Jumping - what kind of a sport is that?

Justin Langer - predictably efficient

Justin Langer came over to the UK. He scored a rash of high scores in Twenty20 despite having little experience of the format. Now he's scored 342 for Somerset, breaking Viv Richards' record, in what is likely to be his only first-class match.

What does he do for an encore? Strike oil while brushing bits off the cut strip with his bat?

He's 35 as well. Batsmen tend to mature quite late. While we have an almost fanatical devotion to cricketing youth, we do think that Test batsmen should be more mature. Mark Butcher and Michael Vaughan shouldn't give up hope yet. Neither should we.

We had yet another dream where we were playing for England recently. This time we were batting. We started slowly and we thought that we might be out of our depth, but then Spider-man came on first-change and we started finding the middle of the bat. The crowd chanted our name and we closed in on a hundred. Then we woke up and remembered that actually we weren't an international cricketer. We weren't anything. We don't even have a job for much longer. Then we had a cup of tea and felt quite happy again.

Guy from Razorlight loves cricket

Who'd have thought it? We've never really liked the guy from Razorlight, but we're changing our opinion. In a BBC interview he reveals that he loves cricket and from what he says you get the impression that he knows what he's on about.

He's a little bit posh and he overly-stylises some pronunciations in songs - which really irritates us - but he LOVES CRICKET. You can't hate someone who loves cricket can you?

Plus the verse in his new song sounds kind of like a Clash pastiche. It's, er, tolerable... He does love cricket though. We should give the boy-faced, attention-seeking fop the benefit of the doubt.

Andy Flintoff redresses balance with the ball

Following on from yesterday's twin prongs of bad news - an update.

In the Lancashire match, Andrew Flintoff has taken 2-16 against Kent. In our working life, we're, er, disappointed. There aren't any developments, but we are going to make an effort not to let our BITTER, TWISTED, MALEVOLENT RAGE seep out and ruin King Cricket.

If any reader happens to be blown away by our punctuation could they please offer us a job. Very few people are 'blown away' by punctuation, so we're not holding out much hope.

Tyron Henderson rubs salt in our fresh wounds

We've just been made redundant so we figured that there wasn't really anything stopping us from writing King Cricket. Excuse the tone if it's a tad vitriolic, but somebody's got to pay and being as it can't be Ken-who-just-delivered-us-the-bad-news, it might as well be Tyron Henderson of Kent.

We thought that we'd cheer ourself up by checking Lancashire's score, but horror of horrors, our lads are 186-7 and this Tyron Henderson has 4-28.

We'll be honest. We hadn't heard of Tyron Henderson, so we checked Cricinfo. It turns out that he's a South African medium-pace all-rounder. That's our least favourite type of cricketer, which seems somehow appropriate. If we were 'restructuring' cricket we'd outsource the all-rounder duties to Bangladeshi spin bowlers just to spite Tyron Henderson.

Who does he think he is anyway, swanning over here, joining Kent and destroying Lancashire's batting line-up? He hasn't even played a Test match. He's a nobody. An imposter wielding undue influence. He knows he's not up to the task, so he's overcompensating by throwing his weight about.

Curse you Tyron Henderson and curse you Ken-who-just-delivered-us-the-bad-news. We'd quite like to stab one of you in the eye and it seems rude to judge Tyron on first meeting. We're nothing if not polite.

Steve Harmison's bowling - expert opinion

Steve Harmison's one of our favourite players. That puts him up there with just about anyone who's ever played cricket (we really should try and be a little harder to please). Actually, Steve Harmison really is one of our favourites. Right up there - top two or three probably. Unfortunately, at the minute we've got a little bit of a problem with his bowling, although obviously we wouldn't dream of telling Steve Harmison how to bowl.

We wouldn't dream of it. But we are going to do it. Steve quite often sprays it around a bit, but that's not specifically our problem. We think that he bowls too short. Think of Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh or even Andy Caddick - all tall bowlers, but they didn't hammer the middle of the pitch. They took their wickets with full length balls.

Being tall is an advantage for a fast bowler, but the advantage is not the bounce you get from short length balls - a batsman knows where he is with those - it's with full length balls that rear up. Rap a batsman on the gloves with a full length ball and he'll be a little more cautious going on to the front foot the next time. This caution will be the root cause of his demise. A batsman has to play with certainty.

What qualifies us to write 'expert opinion' you ask. Well on the subject of length, we think we know a thing or two. Back in our playing days in the local under-13s, we were once confronted with a batsman who deposited each of our shorter-pitched deliveries into the chemical works adjacent to the ground. After extensive research (on various Indian batsmen's ages) we can reveal that that batsman, ladies and gentlemen, was none other than Indian opener, Wasim Jaffer - an overseas professional at the age of 12.

If, by chance, you happen to know for a fact that Wasim Jaffer didn't play cricket in the North-West of England at the age of 12, then don't tell us.

It's a Shahid Afridi situation

Pakistan need 380 to win by the end of the day. The pitch is still pretty flat. If this isn't a Shahid Afridi situation, what is?

Who are we kidding? Every situation's a Shahid Afridi situation. Name one situation which wouldn't be improved by Shahid Afridi batting. It doesn't even have to be cricket.

You're on a beach drinking some lurid-coloured cocktail, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and pretending you're Magnum. Would it be improved by Shahid Afridi batting? Yes.

You've just found a six foot wide lump of gold in your back garden. You're feeling on top of the world. Would it be improved by Shahid Afridi batting? Yes.

You're trying to phone up NTL to tell them what morons they are. You're irritated and you're getting nowhere. You're worried that the ignorant wasters are going to bankrupt you. Would it be improved by Shahid Afridi batting? Yes. It'd take your mind of things a bit at least.

Mohammad Yousuf (formerly Yousuf Youhana)

We prefer Mohammad Yousuf's old name - Yousuf Youhana. We know that the change was due to his conversion to Islam and we'd like to add that our preference is entirely based on sound. 'Yousuf Youhana' is alliterative. 'Mohammad Yousuf' isn't.

Here is what you say about Mohammad Yousuf's batting:

• He makes batting look so easy
• He's so experienced
• He seems to have so much time to play the ball

Mohammad Yousuf averages over 50 and in the current Lord's Test against England, he's scored his fourth Test double hundred. We could wheel out some of our more flowery vocabulary to try and write a fitting tribute, but it never really does people justice. it tends to backfire and make us sound like a rather earnest 15-year-old who thinks he's a songwriter. We'll just presume that you all know how good he is and leave it at that.

Old Trafford weather for the Test match

Anyone who's been to a Test match in England will know that one factor affects your enjoyment above all others. It's not how your side fares. It's not what seat you get. It isn't even the length of the queue for the beer tent. It's the weather. Readers from warmer-climes who are spoilt by such strange phenomenon as 'sunshine' and 'even more sunshine' can stop reading. This is going to be one of those posts where the British live up to their stereotype. English readers: Get yourself a cup of tea - this is going to be FASCINATING.

Last year, we were fortunate enough to have tickets for day three of the Ashes Test at Old Trafford. Day three at Old Trafford was the only day of Test cricket that summer that was approaching a wash-out.

We say 'approaching' because there was actually a little bit of cricket. A cynic might say that there was just enough cricket played that spectators couldn't get a full refund. How cynical would you have to be to think that? Of course the fact that the players went off in better light than they'd come on to and that they did so immediately after playing out the exact number of overs required to negate the refund might back up the cynics' view a touch.

So what's the forecast for this year? Of course it's a little far in advance for an actual forecast, but there are some far better ways of predicting the weather. Our approach is called 'pessimism'.

There are two things that have been happening with unprecedented regularity since we moved into our new house just over a month ago: South Manchester has been baking under the harsh glare of the sun EVERY SINGLE DAY; and we've been sleeping soundly from the second we get to bed to the second the alarm goes off.

Last night, we slept badly, therefore it's only a matter of time before the weather turns. We're predicting that it will take a turn for the worse on day three of the Old Trafford Test. We always go to day three.

Paul Collingwood - fielder AND batsman

We don't think we've ever had a bad word to say about Paul Collingwood. He's much underrated.

Two England batsmen hit unbeaten hundreds yesterday, Alastair Cook (here's a slightly dated post we wrote about him), and Paul Collingwood. Both were great. Both were dropped at one point or another, but made the most of their fortune (we mean 'luck' they didn't swan off during the lunch break to buy rolexes or sports cars made entirely out of gold).

We think Test batsmen should, in general, be a bit older. We think that with experience comes wisdom and also a zen-like state of calm. Paul Collingwood epitomises this. While he hasn't played much Test cricket, he has played a lot of international cricket - 95 one-day internationals. It shows. He's fairly calm at the crease and goes about his work, not worrying about the scorecard. His stroke-making may not be Pietersenian (worst coining ever) but it's efficient and it's the results that count - 109 not out after day one.

This follows on from an even more impressive hundred in India. Paul Collingwood should be taken seriously. We worry a bit about his skin during these long innings though. His skin always looks mighty red, being as he's a ginger. He'll know what he's doing though. He's been a ginger even longer than he's been an international cricketer and Paul Collingwood certainly learns from experience.

We think he needs a little bit more golf experience judging by the photo.

Pakistan drop catches - is it nerves?

Pakistan dropped five catches yesterday, which is bloody awful. Some of them were absolute sitters as well. (Can catches be 'sitters'? Should we have said 'dollies'?)

It reminded us (and everyone else) of England's dropping frenzy during the Lord's Test against Sri Lanka. Is it Lord's? We think it's probably more to do with nerves or, more accurately, tension.

It was the first Test of the tour and the first session. You want to get off to a good start. If the players are slightly on edge then a catch can go down. At that point, catching becomes an issue. Catching is seemingly an easy thing to do, but it's really quite complex. You have but a split second to time a catch, the slightest difference in your approach can be the difference between catching the ball and dropping it. If a catch goes down, players are likely to be feeling slightly different when the next chance presents itself. If that goes down, things get worse. And worse.

We should know. We get nervous and start missing at World Cup Volley during our lunch break and we're only competing against three people who we work with at something that doesn't even begin to matter. Plus one of the three's completely hopeless. We don't even care about it ourself, but we forget in the heat of the moment. The heat of the moment in World Cup Volley probably doesn't compare to the heat of the moment in the Lord's Test.

Have Pakistan taken the lead in the injury stakes?

We definitely get the feeling that Pakistan are taking pity on England and are fielding a reserve side to give their opponents a chance. In addition to Shoaib Akhtar and Naved-ul-Hasan's absence from the first Test, they will also be without Mohammad Asif, Younis Khan and Shoaib Malik.

From England's perspective, they must take advantage. Judging by the way their performances deteriorated so drastically during the series against Sri Lanka, England would do well to get whatever they can out of this series as soon as possible.

Some England pundits have emphasised how England's newer bowling recruits must step up and make an impact. Others feel that it's up to the senior bowlers, Harmison and Hoggard, to lead by example. We're not so fussy. If Ian Bell takes five wickets and England win, we'll be happy.

We're ever so slightly disappointed that recent call-up Samiullah Khan Niazi won't be appearing for Pakistan. We have to keep telling ourself that just because he's a left-arm quick from Pakistan it doesn't necessarily mean that he's going to be like Wasim Akram. We've been telling ourself that since we first heard about him, but we haven't really been listening. The depth of our wishful thinking is quite staggering at times.

There's a picture of Samiullah Khan Niazi here at Cricinfo. It doesn't seem real somehow. He resolutely DOESN'T look like Wasim Akram.

Cross-posted at Cricket 24x7

Graham Gooch's All Star Cricket

While we're on the subject of Graham Gooch and tying in with our long-since-passed Cricket Game Day, here's a screenshot of Graham Gooch's All Star Cricket.



We're old enough to know that games that looked this bad were often entertaining, despite their primitive appearance. However, we reckon that we played all the cricket games that were made around this period (1987) and they were all rubbish. Therefore, Graham Gooch's All Star Cricket was rubbish.

So what have we learnt? That just because a game looks terrible, it doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad. And just because some good games look terrible, it doesn't follow that a terrible-looking game will always be good.

It's what's on the inside that counts - that's what our mum tells us when we cry about our face.

More cricket games

Graham Gooch - 333

We were going to write about Graham Gooch's 333 for our 333rd post, but we accidentally wrote our 333rd post last night, by accident, so this is our 334th post. Don Bradman once hit 334, but we don't know much about that. We don't actually know a great deal about Graham Gooch's 333, but it's one of our earliest international cricket memories, so we thought we'd mark it in some way.

It was the first Test in the England v India series of 1990 and it was played at Lord's. Graham Gooch hit 333. We were camping somewhere in the UK at the time and we remember seeing the newspaper the next day. We couldn't believe that anyone could score that many runs in one go. When we used to play cricket on our own against the garage we could never get to 333. We were bowling gently to ourself, all our shots went for four or six and we cheated like hell. We still couldn't hit 333.

Graham Gooch was our hero at that age. As we grew older, we learnt more about him and went off him quite a bit. He led a rebel tour to apartheid South Africa. He's not at all the kind of person we admire. We don't even respect him if we're honest. That's the best thing about Andrew Flintoff: He's a great cricketer first, but he also seems like a pretty decent sort of bloke as well. We're glad that the next generation are less likely to be disappointed by their hero.

What's with us this morning? We're all emotional and earnest. We've been struggling to come to terms with the passage of time this week. Maybe that's having a bearing.

Graham Gooch: A great batsman who lacked conscience when money was involved, but was a standard-bearer for facial furniture - not a textbook hero by any means. Not our hero.

Preventing cricket injuries

Matthew Hoggard seems likely to miss tomorrow's first Test against Pakistan having had his hand trodden on by Tim Bresnan. Bresnan was wearing spikes at the time.

With Pakistan missing an entire bowling attack and England's injury woes well-documented, we got to thinking about the benefits of the central contract system. The idea behind central contracts was that England would have control over their Test and one-day players and would be able to protect them from the horrific injuries which they would undoubtedly suffer in county cricket (you know - knife wounds, coronaries, bowel cancer). Clearly it isn't working.

It's perhaps worth learning from specific injuries and acting to prevent future mishaps. For example, what could England do to prevent another injury like Matthew Hoggard's? Clearly England players should wear gauntlets at all times. This would kill two birds with one stone. It would protect England's players from rogue spiked footwear and it would also provide a use for the nation's vast stockpile of gauntlets. Gauntlets are much under-used in today's age and it's a shame to let them go to waste.

We have one further suggestion, which is to literally wrap England players in cotton wool. The media often use this phrase metaphorically, but we think that Duncan Fletcher should encase each and every cricketing representative of the nation in actual cotton wool. Then he should put them somewhere safe. Like in a drawer or somewhere.

Ronnie Irani outshines Matt Prior

You've got to love a form of cricket where Darren Gough bats at three, haven't you? He didn't really contribute much with the bat last night, but it's the thought: Darren Gough at three.

Gough's side, Essex, last night secured a place for Twenty20 finals day by beating Sussex. Matt Prior hit 77 off 43 balls, but he was superseded by Ronnie Irani who made 100 not out off 61 balls.

We always thought that Ronnie Irani was a cheeky cockney type. Then he was interviewed and he sounds like a Lancastrian farmer's super-rural, never-been-to-Blackburn grandfather. We found this out about ten years ago and we're still coming to terms with it.

Prior to that we'd never seen him and made certain assumptions about his appearance. Then we saw him and he looks like a super-rural, never-been-to-Blackburn grandfather's grandson who's a farmer.

Cameron White Twenty20 record innings

We should probably write something about Cameron White's Twenty20 record innings of 141 not out from 70 balls. We were going to write about how he's YET ANOTHER Australian batsman pilfering runs in county cricket, but he's not just that. He's actually a leg-spinner as well.

Following this innings and bearing the leg-spin factor in mind, it's like he's an Australian Shahid Afridi. And he's young.

The odds are stacking against us. There's every chance that we're going to have to start liking another Australian. Well we're not going down without a fight. We have to have some standards.

Hit a double-quick Twenty20 hundred again Cameron. Go on. Do it. We dare you. In fact we double dare you. There's no way of evading a double dare situation. We've ensnared you in a challenge to prove your worth one way or another.

Let cricket cheer us

Not like a fan. We don't want cricket to give us an ovation or anything. We mean 'cheer us up'. We could have written that as the title, but we opted for a more Dickensian tone. The adoption of a Dickensian tone will hopefully make up for the shortfall in class.

We're sad. Football made us sad. We're not going to go into details, but suffice to say that it was the World Cup final yesterday and we only like one footballer. Cricket never makes us sad. It makes us annoyed sometimes; it makes us despair; but we can't really recall it making us sad. So what better place to look for something to cheer us. We're going to make a short list.

1. Andrew Flintoff took 3-4 in a Twenty20 match. This means that he's still ace and also that he can run around. This is good news.
2. Pakistan are in the country. That means that Shahid Afridi and Inzamam-ul-Haq are in the country and we'll get to watch them play cricket. This is also good news.
3. Ian Bell's back in the Test team. Pretty much nobody outside of the Bell household (he looks like he lives with his mum, doesn't he?) will be happy about this, but we are. Ian Bell's good and still needs a little bit of time. He's younger than you think. Give him a chance. This is good news really.
4. Monty Panesar will be playing and not some 'capable' spin bowler who just happens to be a batsman really. This is great news.
5. Despite all the injuries and losing and everything, England's squad really isn't all that bad. This is good news.

Writing this list has actually cheered us up a bit. It's thinking about cricket that does it. Cricket is just fundamentally happy.

We promise we'll never leave you again, cricket. We're sorry. Football wasn't all it was cracked up to be and the stories didn't have happy endings. There's a Test match this week and it doesn't get any better than that.

Graeme Hick and Twenty20

Graeme Hick's 40. If Twenty20 is a young man's game then 40's young, because Graeme Hick hit 75 off 34 balls last night.

We always loved Graeme Hick. There was always the chance that he would tear the opposition apart. It was always going to be the next innings. The next innings was going to be the one where the real Graeme Hick stood up and showed his worth. That he very rarely managed it (for England at any rate) was beside the point. No-one else had such potential. When your side's losing you need some vain hope to cling to. In our head Graeme Hick was always about to hit 400. He'd done it in county cricket, so it was possible...

Between 1993 and 1995, Hick averaged over 45 in Tests, but overall his Test average was just 31.32, which is bad. We're not really contributing anything here. We hate looking back on a player's career and wondering what might have been. It's pointless. Particularly for Hick, because a million other people have already done the whole retrospective 'if only' thing.

We're going to concentrate on something more productive, like badgering the guy in front of us to go and make a brew. We're not going to make one ourselves. Not while we've got some badgering in us. Please send us any tried and tested badgering techniques that you have.

Will Jefferson's back

As in 'returned'. He hasn't got ankylosing spon... What? We've made that joke before? So?

Will Jefferson hit 51 off only 27 balls as Essex beat Middlesex. We're pretty content with how our Ones To Watch have been performing thus far, but we're not blown away. We're not really going to be satisfied until England's chairman of selectors, David Graveney, says: "Wow. Those guys at King Cricket are far better informed than me and have a real eye for a player. I'm going to do the decent thing and hand over the reins to them."

Most of you will have a fair idea what we'd do first if we were given control of England selection.

...Rob Key... hits... A HUNDRED

July the 6th, 2006. Where were you when it happened?

It’s like Christmas; our birthday; the day when this manager that we hated was fired for shady dealings; and that time we found a fiver, all rolled into one. We’ve been waiting a long time for this, but it’s finally happened: Rob Key has hit a century.

We even went so far as to listen to tennis on the way home from work. Our reasoning being that on a dedicated sport radio station there was a chance that there would be some sort of report on the England A game. There was no report and Rob actually reached his hundred while we were in the car. We didn’t find out until we got home. Radio 5 Live isn’t going to be on in our car again.

This is what cricket scorecards in heaven must look like.

Here’s the bit where it tells you it’s an England (A) match:

And here’s the bit where there are three digits next to Rob Key’s name:

We’re going to start a conga in a few minutes. Hopefully people will start to join us pretty much straight away. We’ll make our way south and should arrive at the ground just in time for the start of play tomorrow morning. At that point, we estimate that we’ll have recruited three million people to participate. Three million is the mark out of ten that we give Rob Key’s batting.

Rob Key posts:
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Our Twenty20 instincts

It turns out that Kent are top of the Twenty20 South division. We (vaguely) wrote about the Kent match earlier. Nottinghamshire are top of the Twenty20 North division. We had a post about that too.

We had no idea that we'd done this. We clearly have an instinctive feel for what's going on in the world of cricket. We're more attuned to writing this website than we previously thought. We're going to celebrate that fact with a cake the shape of a cricket bat, even though we don't actually like cake. We prefer cheese.

Mark Ealham scores some runs in Twenty20

Next in our random series of posts highlighting any old Twenty20 performance: Mark Ealham. He hit 31 off only seven balls. Four sixes and a four. Not bad, eh? It should be noted that last year he hit 34 off six balls, which is even handier.

He also took 1-15 off his four overs, which by Twenty20 standards is pretty exceptional. Mark Ealham was the one-time holder of England's best limited overs bowling figures, 5-15 against Zimbabwe. That could still be the record, but we can't be bothered finding out. We vaguely remember someone improving on it, but we're not sure.

Mark Ealham always turned up in cricket games and did better than you wanted him to. You wanted Andy Caddick and Darren Gough to be your best bowlers, but inevitably your team revolved around Mark Ealham with his arcing medium-pacers.

Rob Key masters Twenty20

Rob Key hit 41 not out off 33 balls against Middlesex. Try telling us that wasn't why Kent won. Go on - try. We won't have it. Rob Key's innings was the SOLE reason that Kent emerged victorious even if Matthew Walker hit 58, also off 33 balls.

We have no idea if Kent or Middlesex are any good at Twenty20. We don't know how the competetion's going. We don't even know how it works really.

We'd better go and check the table now. (Is there a table?)

Previous Rob Key posts:
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Andrew Strauss is England captain for a match or so

Andrew Strauss will captain England in the first Test against Pakistan. It has also been confirmed that Andrew Flintoff will take over when he returns from injury. That makes Flintoff THE England captain, right?

We're fairly ambivalent about the captaincy pretensions of both Strauss and Flintoff. Strauss is rumoured to be 'very astute' or something, but he just lost a one-day series 5-0. If it were possible to lose a five match series by a greater margin, England would have done. It would have been about 8-0 we reckon. That would have been a fair reflection on the five matches played.

Flintoff led England to that riotous victory in Mumbai recently, but we're never that enamoured of picking your best player as captain. It seems like what you'd do if you were at school.

Looking back we didn't think that much of Michael Vaughan when he was first appointed either. We'd seen England progress under Nasser Hussain's 'no carrot, very big stick' approach and were concerned by Vaughan's statement that he would be a more laid-back captain. It turned out that Vaughan was England's best captain since Mike Brearley, so it goes to show what we know.

Good luck to both Strauss and Flintoff then. Hopefully the bowlers will stop making your job completely redundant by gift-wrapping the match and forcing the opposition to accept it at gunpoint.

The Alternative Test Cricket World Championship

This is how it works. People often have a bit of a problem coming to terms with it, but it's really quite simple. Basically, the Alternative Test Cricket World Championship works like a boxing title. To win the title, you must beat the current champions in a Test series - not in a match - in a series. If the series is drawn, then the champions retain their title.

So who are the current Alternative Test Cricket World Champions? Well big thanks to The Scientician because working this out is just the kind of thing that we can't be bothered doing. We wouldn't have known where to start - so we didn't. The Scientician traced the path of the title from the very first Test series between England and Australia back in 1877. The full table can be seen in this post.

Pakistan are currently the Alternative Test Cricket World Champions having beaten England late last year - England having prised the title off Australia in the Ashes. The Scientician is 98% certain that Pakistan are the current holders, which is more than good enough for us because even after our very best effort we'd only be about 4% certain that we were right.

The upshot of this is that the upcoming Test series between England and Pakistan is an Alternative Test Cricket World Championship bout. If England can win, they will reclaim the title.

Come on. That's better than it being 'an indicator for the upcoming Ashes series'.

This whole thing was inspired/stolen from the Unofficial World Championship which does much the same thing for football. We should probably mention that.

Some Alternative Test Cricket World Championship analysis

Statistic-tastic. Let's all work out standard deviation and do some hypothesis testing. Come on... Everybody...

Maybe we should start simply. Here's a table of all the Alternative Test Cricket World Champions down the years:


And here's a pie chart of how long each nation has held the title:

So what stands out? For us there are three major talking points:

1: New Zealand have never been Alternative Test Cricket World Champions

2: Zimbabwe have! They beat then champions, India, in 1998 and held on until Australia beat them in 1999

3: The Windies held onto the title for a whopping 14 years between 1981 and 1995. Whopping, you hear.

How the Alternative Test Cricket World Championship works.

Sri Lanka's tour was a success

We haven't really been writing about this one-day series between England and Sri Lanka for two reasons. Firstly, as an England fan there's nothing to really celebrate. Secondly, the majority of our readers are English and couldn't care less about the series because England's losses are almost choreographed they're so predictable. Granted, we'd have more Sri Lankan readers if we had written about it, but come on. Have you seen the scores? We're no masochist.

It would be interesting to produce a graph charting Sri Lanka's performances over the course of this tour. It's always fun to explain things with a graph (at least it is in our world). Sri Lanka started uncertainly getting bowled out cheaply in warm-up games. Then they lost to England A. In the Test series, they went from 'clinging on impressively' to 'drawing but making a bit of a statement' to 'winning'. We've put 'winning' in inverted commas because it's such a strange notion to England supporters at present.

Following on from the Test series, they started off winning and just ground England into the dirt. It'll take a month to dig up half of England's one-day side, they were ground into the dirt so comprehensively.

Well played Sri Lanka. It was a pleasure to have you round. Please visit again. We promise we'll be in better shape next time.