Mushtaq Ahmed decides the County Championship

Mushtaq Ahmed has pretty much decided the County Championship by taking 4-60 in bowling out Sussex's opponents, Nottinghamshire, for 165. He's now taken 4-6 to reduce them to 50-4 in their second innings. That's four wickets for six runs, to clarify.

But more than that, Mushtaq Ahmed's season-long contribution has also decided the County Championship. The man just takes heaps and heaps of wickets. If you're batting last against Sussex, you're done for.

Mushtaq Ahmed has now taken 12,000 first-class wickets for Sussex at an average of 4.15. He has, at one time or another, bowled out everyone in the phone book and even some fictional characters, such as Sherlock Holmes and Wizbit - Wizbit came down the pitch and was stumped.

Lancashire will rightly blame the weather for their impending runners-up spot, but we're sure they'll not begrudge Sussex the title one bit. They shouldn't.

Brad Hodge re-signs for Lancashire

That's 're-signs for' not 'resigns from'.

We were initially disappointed to hear that Brad Hodge had signed for Lancashire for two more years. Why? Well we didn't think he really pulled his weight in the middle-order and we're a big believer in getting a bowler as your overseas player. As we've previously mentioned: Bowlers win matches.

Then we thought about it for more than a fraction of a second. Lancashire can list among their bowlers Andrew Flintoff, Sajid Mahmood, James Anderson, Glen Chapple, Dominic Cork, Gary Keedy, Tom Smith and Kyle Hogg. You could realistically permute several representative England bowling attacks from those players: Current England, Former England, England Nearly-Men, Future England.

Then we thought about Lancashire's middle-order batsmen: Stuart Law. Fantastic as it would be to have Stuart Law batting at four, five and six, the poor guy would get confused as to which end to run to and the scorers would have a nightmare working out which Stuart Law had scored which runs.

Then we read that Brad Hodge topped Lancashire's batting averages last year.

Then we remembered that we actually quite rate Brad Hodge and that he's been dropped by Australia and will therefore be resoundingly available for the season, unlike most overseas players.

Moral: Spend more than a fraction of a second thinking about some stuff. Not all stuff, though. You don't have time.

Murali returns to Lancashire

If we had to work up a bit of enthusiasm for Lancashire's retention of Brad Hodge then this is the kind of work where they pay you a fortune for drinking tea and sleeping a bit: Lancashire have re-signed Muttiah Muralitharan, part-time genius, full-time nicest man in history.

He'll only be around for a handful of matches, no doubt. We'll definitely try and catch one of them. We'll sit at fine-leg and buy him an ice cream.

Mal Loye: Everyone wants to know about him

Sometimes we do updates because we've got something to say. Sometimes we do updates because something happens that's impossible to ignore. More commonly we do updates because we've read a quote by an Australian cricketer and when taken out of context it makes them look stupid.

On very rare occasions, we do updates because lots of people want to find out about something and we feel like we ought to make the effort.

So Mal Loye's been called into England's one-day squad for this tri-nations series. Most people don't know who Mal Loye is, so here goes.

Mal Loye plays cricket for Lancashire. He's their best batsman. He's better than Stuart Law, he's better than Andrew Flintoff and he was better than Brad Hodge when Brad Hodge played for Lancashire last year. At least we think he was. Statistics might say otherwise, but statistics aren't going to send you literally hundreds of agitated emails written in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS if you disagree with them.

Mal Loye bats at number three for Lancashire in four-day cricket, but in one-day cricket he opens. He 'takes advantage of the fielding restrictions' in the parlance of cricket-writers worldwide. Sometimes he does this by slog-sweeping opening bowlers for six. It's weird. It's a bit unnerving when he tries it (which is often) but he seems to manage it, so who are we to argue?

If England's one-day team were run like Australia's, Mal Loye would have been playing for the last three years and would arrive at the World Cup full of experience at the height of his batting powers. As England's one-day team isn't run like Australia's, Mal Loye will probably arrive at the World Cup as a virtual debutant, 34 years of age and soon to be discarded. Small differences.

Benevolent Uncle Sanath signs for Lancashire

Lancashire have signed Benevolent Uncle Sanath for the duration of the Twenty20, which is not a bad move at all. We're especially pleased, not just because Jayasuriya's so good, but because he seems like a really nice bloke.

We like it when Lancashire's overseas players are nice. It makes us feel warm; like we don't live in a world where people will steal the front wheel of your bike if you don't chain it to a policeman.

Apparently Benevolent Uncle Sanath retired from all forms of international cricket after the World Cup. We thought he would, but managed to miss the announcement anyway. We were probably busy staring into space and humming.

Kabir Ali takes 8-50 against Lancashire

Kabir Ali was unsurreptitiously abandoned by England after being mercilessly flayed to all parts of Headingley by Benevolent Uncle Sanath and Upul Tharanga last summer. He finished with the undignified figures of 0-72 off six overs. He's out, said England's selectors, the press and the supporters.

Kabir Ali took 8-50 against Lancashire today and that's all he can really do to resurrect his international career - keep taking absolutely stacks of wickets. Even then it might not be enough.

Kabir wasn't the only bowler to receive 'the treatment' that day (or the previous match), but whereas Liam Plunkett (0-46 off five) and Steve Harmison (0-97 off ten) will be appearing for England on Thursday, Kabir seems to have been rejected then and there. If he can bounce back, he'll prove he's a tougher guy than was presumed at the time.

Dominic Cork and Glen Chapple

Sorry for the lull. We've been away for a few days. We had a bit of a canoe in a vain attempt to alter our flabby, yet paradoxically scrawny physique. Fully-clad, we look like Glenn McGrath (without the mullet of course). Remove our shirt and suddenly we're Shane Warne.

One thing we missed while we were away was a further development in our schizophrenic attitude to Lancashire all-rounders Glen Chapple and Dominic Cork. The pair bowled out Surrey for 120 setting up a Lancashire win. Chapple took 4-40 and Cork, 3-39.

We have no idea where we stand on Glen Chapple and Dominic Cork. Chapple's 33. Cork's 35. Neither are the future of Lancashire cricket club. Neither has the pace they once had either and we despise fast-medium swing bowlers in county cricket - purely because there are so many of them. It gets a bit boring.

Chapple and Cork take up two slots in the bowling attack, so younger bowlers like Saj Mahmood, Tom Smith and Kyle Hogg don't get the opportunities they might. On the other hand, they keep doing things like bowling Surrey out for 120. They're both great bowlers.

They're also both good batsmen. This is a good thing, but the knock-on effect is that all-rounders like Smith and Hogg have to bat at nine or ten where they don't get a chance to do a lot.

We're so conflicted.

Neither managed to take a wicket in the current one-day match against Durham. Chapple then got a duck and Cork was out for five.

We saw James Anderson

We went to watch Lancashire's Pro40 match against Glamorgan yesterday. It was a great victory for Lancashire, although the downside was that it was pretty much over as a contest after about four overs of Glamorgan's innings. Still, you can't complain if your team hammers someone, can you?

Dominic Cork set the tone of the match when he came in to bat at three. He's in form with the bat at the moment and he's still the kind of player who can have an impact that goes further than his own contribution. Nathan Astle outscored him, but it was Dominic Cork's presence that first got him going.

The biggest moment came when the teams were announced. There was one change to Lancashire's side and James Anderson was playing. James Anderson is loved without exception at Old Trafford and an actually quite decent crowd made sort of pleased murmuring sounds for a bit.

Later on, he came out to bowl and he immediately looked a class above anyone else, although maybe that's unfair on Kyle Hogg. Regardless, James Anderson didn't bowl a bad ball and if he wasn't 100%, he still seemed dangerous as he took a couple of wickets. He's not really one for emotions, but he celebrated quite noticeably when he took his first.

He'll probably be used to it by the Ashes and will barely crack a smile when he takes 10-12 in the first Test.

First day of the cricket season: A photo journal

It's the first day of the cricket season. The nation's buzzing. We went down to Old Trafford for Lancashire against Hampshire to sample the party atmosphere.



This was what the sky looked like this morning. We Mancunians pride ourselves on knowing the local weather. These aren't rain clouds.


Hmm. We're not in north Lancashire or south-west Cheshire. We're in the bit without "brighter, drier intervals".

This picture tells us two things: That we're still in our house at 13:06 because of the rain and that we like to pile CDs on top of our stereo.

Woolly hat. Check. Ski socks. Check. It's officially a 'double trousers day' too. Readers in warmer climes may be unfamiliar with the concept of wearing two pairs of trousers simultaneously. Believe us, sometimes it can and must be done.

Play eventually started at 3pm. Lancashire asked Hampshire to bat which meant that we didn't have to endure Iain Sutcliffe's batting. Even Iain Sutcliffe's mum's favourite cricketer isn't Iain Sutcliffe.

Lancashire opened the bowling with ageing medium-pace all-rounder, Glenn Chapple...

...and ageing medium-pace all-rounder, Dominic Cork.

We missed John Crawley's wicket. This is where they put the big screen when there's a Test match.

Glenn Chapple enjoys a bit of banter with the crowd.

Here are a few notable names who could have been playing in this fixture, but weren't: Kevin Pietersen, Shane Warne, James Anderson, Andrew Flintoff, Brad Hodge and Sajid Mahmood. Not to worry though, because the Old Trafford faithful were treated to Dominic Thornely and Nic Pothas instead...

We hadn't seen Tom Smith before, but we were impressed. He consistently made the batsmen play and on occasions beat them for pace. He fully deserved his 3-29. Are we the first off the mark in lauding him? What do we win?

We were slightly disappointed that nobody spoke to us, like World Cup winner, Andy Bichel did, but we still had a good day, largely due to Lancashire's success and partly due to the large amount of clothes we wore.

Ganguly Watch

India have arrived in Pakistan for their tour. For those that don’t really get the importance: Try and remember Ashes fever. Now imagine that England and Australia have been threatening to wage war on each other for fifty years. Multiply the populations of both countries by about twenty. Then imagine that everyone, but everyone, loves cricket more than anything else - Transformers included.

The ongoing story for India is the fate of former captain Saurav Ganguly who was unceremoniously dethroned as captain, then dropped, then reinstated as an all-rounder, then dropped and now back in the squad again.

We think that Greg Chappell is just bringing him along to make him carry the drinks. Greg Chappell can be mean.

Ganguly used to play for Lancashire, but nobody liked him and he was rubbish. Everyone much prefers it when Murali’s at Lancashire, because he’s happy ALL THE TIME. He’s our favourite Lancashire overseas player since Wasim Akram.