Great Cricketers We Have Known: Ehsan Mani

Not us, but once again our Sri Lanka correspondent, ‘Dad’, and not strictly speaking a cricketer either, but the President of the ICC.

During the presentation ceremony of the Under-19 World Cup final, Dad went into the clubhouse for a look round. When Ehsan Mani returned from the pitch, having presented the Under-19 World Cup, he mistakenly thought that Dad was part of the reception committee and went to shake his hand. Unfortunately for us, Dad absent-mindedly forgot to request free tickets for every single Test match from now until the end of time.

Still, it’s another strong link for the King Cricket team and further confirmation of our acceptance as part of the mainstream media.

Great cricketers we have known: Paul Allott

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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