The Buzz
Red tape alive and well in England
The petty bureaucracy that still blights English cricket reared its ugly head again last month when Ryan Sidebottom’s comeback attempts were blocked by red tape
Martin Williamson
25-Feb-2013
The petty bureaucracy that still blights English cricket reared its ugly head again last month when Ryan Sidebottom’s comeback attempts were blocked by red tape. Recovering from a long-term injury, Sidebottom tried to test his fitness with an outing for Nottinghamshire Premier League side Plumtree, only to be turned down by league officials on the grounds that his appearance would infringe their rules governing player registration.
“I wasn’t ready for a Championship match but I was desperate for a game,” Sidebottom told the Mail on Sunday. “I did find it a bit strange that I couldn’t get a game in my own county.”
He eventually did find someone willing to allow an England international to take to the field and he played for Leek in the North Staffordshire and South Cheshire League. He said he would do so again “given the chance”.
Back down in Surrey, it took endless debates to persuade the people running the Surrey Championship that a teenager good enough to play for his country, a resident for six years and still qualified for Surrey and England, was eligible to play in their league.
Full post'Meeting Mr Miandad'
For pre-game and mid-innings entertainment at the World Twenty20 how about some cricket pop
Nishi Narayanan
25-Feb-2013
For pre-game and mid-innings entertainment at the World Twenty20 how about some cricket pop? Songs like ‘Meeting Mr Miandad’, ‘Test Match Special’ and ‘Jiggery Pokery’ would be a refreshing change from Bollywood remixes and billboard hits from two years ago.
Neil Hannon, songwriter for the band Divine Comedy, and Thomas Walsh, from Pugwash, have collaborated on a concept album called The Duckworth Lewis Method which they call “possibly the least necessary album of recent years”.
Jiggery Pokery, a song inspired by Shane Warne’s first ball of the Ashes, could probably be played just after the national anthems at the start of this year’s England-Australia series. And you can sing along as well:
Jiggery pokery, trickery chokery, how did he open me up
Robbery! Muggery! Aussie skull-duggery! Out for a buggering duck.
What a delivery I might as well have been Holding a child's balloon
Jiggery pokery who is this nobody Making me look a buffoon?"
The Mongoose makes its mark
There were two overs to go in Derbyshire’s innings during their Twenty20 Cup match against Durham
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
There were two overs to go in Derbyshire’s innings during their Twenty20 Cup match against Durham. Stuart Law was batting on 32 and the need for acceleration prompted him to change his weapon. He switched the conventional bat he’d been using for the Mongoose – a bat with a short blade, long handle, 20% more power and 15% more speed – which is supposedly tailor-made for shredding bowlers.
“You need to get used to it,” Law said, cautioning those who may have been rushing to improve their strike-rates. “The greater bat-speed means you’re more inclined to go through early with the stroke — which is a good thing in a way.” In the end Law scored only ten runs with the Mongoose but six of those came via a monstrous hit over midwicket. Are ball manufacturers already working on the Cobra to level the playing field?
Full postMcGrath statue sure to attract pigeons
He might not have played a game in the IPL, but Glenn McGrath will be remembered forever in his home town of Narromine
Cricinfo
25-Feb-2013
He might not have played a game in the IPL, but Glenn McGrath will be remembered forever in his home town of Narromine. McGrath will be the subject of a life-size bronze statue that is certain to attract interest from local birds, who will be keen to drop in on the fast bowler known as ‘Pigeon’.
The Sun-Herald reports the work will cost more than A$70,000 and will be unveiled next month. McGrath grew up in the western New South Wales town before heading to Sydney and turning into one of the game’s greatest bowlers. His reputation didn’t impress Delhi, who didn’t call on him at all in South Africa.
Full postExperience + money = match-fixing?
Javed Miandad recently alleged that IPL games, often decided off the last ball this season, were being fixed
Siddhartha Talya
25-Feb-2013
Javed Miandad recently alleged that IPL games, often decided off the last ball this season, were being fixed. Now you can find out of yourself, if you’re an ace mathematician that is.
Professor David Forrest, a renowned gambling researcher, believes it is possible to calculate whether or not match result has been influenced by cheating players and corrupt officials. He and his colleagues came up with a complex formula, which takes into account how many years of competition an athlete has left, the probability of their being caught, their current wealth and the potential damage to their reputation. "An industry estimate is that on a weekend of Premier League football, half a billion dollars is wagered, most of that from Asia,” Forrest was quoted as saying in the Manchester Evening News. “Even more money is spent on cricket, with a billion dollars of bets each day on a Test match."
The likelihood of a match being “fixed” is higher in matches where teams have nothing to play for, Forrest said. All the more reason then, to closely examine the trend of dead rubbers yielding favourable results for weaker team.
Full postWMD? Game-changer? Nah, it's just a bat
It promises to be as revolutionary in cricket as graphite rackets and titanium clubs were in tennis and golf
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
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It promises to be as revolutionary in cricket as graphite rackets and titanium clubs were in tennis and golf. That’s the Mongoose bat, designed for Twenty20 batsmen – long handle, short blade, 20 per cent more power, 15 per cent more speed and a silicon chip that can predict the swing of the ball. Okay, we made the last one up but you get the drift – this bat can apparently do almost anything and, best of all, it’s legal, having received the MCC’s seal of approval. The bat will make its first-class debut next week in the Twenty20 Cup as Derbyshire’s Stuart Law takes on the Durham attack. The manufacturers aren’t afraid of hyping it up; it is the “single most radical change to cricket equipment since 1771”, a “game-changing weapon” ensuring that “run accumulation has been replaced by all-out attack”. Or, as Law put it, a “weapon of mass destruction”. Maybe it does have that silicon chip after all.
Full postInvasion of the bail snatcher
We’ve heard of streakers, insects and mysterious vandals either holding up play or preventing it entirely, but a pitch invasion by a single person having a substantial effect on the result of a game
Jamie Alter
25-Feb-2013
We’ve heard of streakers, insects and mysterious vandals either holding up play or preventing it entirely, but a pitch invasion by a single person having a substantial effect on the result of a game? That’s a new one. But it happened, and Scotland were left rather annoyed after a loss to Warwickshire during a Friends Provident Trophy match in Edinburgh. Chasing 242, Scotland were 131 for 3 when a baffling intruder – later identified only as “Ginger” by a bunch of traveling friends from the English Midlands – ran in and nicked a bail from in front of everyone. Said invader then proceeded to get away Scot free (no pun intended), dodging the minimal security and jumping over a boundary wall with the loot. The actions of the “idiot” as Scotland captain Gavin Hamilton dubbed him, led to a five-minute hold-up that was quickly followed by Neil McCallum's dismissal as Scotland lost their sixth game in a row. "We were doing so well when the guy ran on and took a bit of the momentum we had achieved away,” said McCallum. “It was frustrating.” Talk about getting away on bail.
Full postAzhar's second innings
India’s general elections were a vindication not only for the Congress party but for one of its debutant candidates
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
India’s general elections were a vindication not only for the Congress party but for one of its debutant candidates. And soon after his win was announced Mohammad Azharuddin celebrated his return to the headlines as a leader once again. “I was overwhelmed,” he told The Telegraph after being elected from the Moradabad constituency. “Till recently I didn’t expect to be in politics... Now, I’m in the Lok Sabha... That’s why I got overwhelmed and, in a way, felt I finally got to play my 100th Test.” He was referring, of course, to his exile from cricket after 99 Tests on being implicated in the match-fixing case. While he couldn’t draw a direct comparison between this achievement and his feats on the cricket field, he said it was it could be on a par with his “No.1 achievement” in the game - a hundred in each of his first three Tests (at home against England, in 1984-85). Azhar’s gradual return from the cold began in 2006 and his second innings has got off to a positive start.
Full postCricket's latest ghost writers
At the start of the English season, Lawrence Booth wrote on Cricinfo about the country-wide culling of cricket writers
Martin Williamson
25-Feb-2013
At the start of the English season, Lawrence Booth wrote on Cricinfo about the country-wide culling of cricket writers. The sports desk of the Daily Telegraph was among those to trim back, but satirical magazine Private Eye reports on how it has tried to disguise the fact.
The more alert of its readers would have noticed a new batch of writers treading the county circuit of late The only thing, Private Eye claims, is that many of them don’t seem to exist.
For a number of years the bylines of Nelson Clare and Austin Peters have appeared regularly to cover for occasions when the paper had nobody covering overseas series (on one occasion bemused readers noted Peters covered matches in Sydney and Colombo on the same day). However, this time it’s closer to home.
“It’s a glorious wheeze,” the Eye claims, “take some agency copy, stick a fake name on the top, and hey presto, a cricket page which costs almost nothing.”
Full postYuvraj attempts to break barriers
Durban has happy memories for Yuvraj Singh – it’s where he hammered Stuart Broad for six sixes in an over during the World Twenty20 in 2007
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
Durban has happy memories for Yuvraj Singh – it’s where he hammered Stuart Broad for six sixes in an over during the World Twenty20 in 2007. Now, he’s set to use bat and ball to spread some of that happiness around. Come May 19, his charity foundation will host a fundraiser for ‘Cricket Beyond Boundaries’, a project to introduce cricket to children of diverse communities in the Western Cape’s Gansbaai region as a means of breaking barriers and promoting integration. Tuesday’s event, planned as the first of a series, will include an auction of cricket memorabilia and features as its guest of honour Vikas Swarup, the author of Q&A, the book on which the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire is based. Now that’s not a bad inspiration for anyone trying to break barriers.
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