The Surfer
It proves the ICC's anti-corruption unit is doing its job, despite there being few high-profile victims in recent years.
The Guardian's Paul Weaver meets Mark Ramprakash, the Surrey batsman who is all set for his 100th hundred in first-class cricket, while still hoping to earn an England recall at the age of 38.
It is still his first century that Mark Ramprakash remembers most vividly. And he thought of it again yesterday morning as he packed his bags for the Rose Bowl where today he may become the 25th and probably the final cricketer to score 100 first-class centuries.
Ellyse Perry, the dual international, is a teenager with cricket and soccer vying for her long-term attention
The call-up comes amid speculation Perry, 17, will be used as the promotional face for the Women's Cricket World Cup, to be held in Australia next March. However, the Matildas coach Tom Sermanni says Football Federation Australia won't be pressuring Perry to choose between the two games.
Shantanu Guha Ray, writing in Tehelka , analyses the perform-or-perish mantra that has been on display in the IPL.
The leaguing of cricket has ushered in corporatisation, fabulous salaries and high voltage drama on the playing fields, but it’s come at a price — punishment for non-performance is swift. Worse, the execution is very, very, public. Midway through the IPL season, the first CEO axing has been effected: liquor baron Vijay Mallya pulled the plug on his Royal Challenger team boss, Charu Sharma, who resigned last week, citing ‘personal reasons’.
In the Age , Greg Baum gives his view on the ICC's move towards player referrals to the third umpire.
It is perverse that within seconds of an umpire's decision, the only interested parties who do not know whether it was right or wrong are those most affected by it. It was this dynamic that embarrassed the umpires in the Sydney Test earlier this year and contributed to the escalating nastiness.
Frank Keating is almost apoplectic at the England selectors’ continued refusal to include Mark Ramprakash in a Test squad
It was (and continues to be) infuriating, almost shaming, how for the past half-dozen years successive Lord's mandarins (the dreaded po-faced politburo of Graveney-Fletcher-Hussain-Vaughan-Moores) have with such wantonly brazen impenitence refused, it seems, to so much as even glance at the batting averages. Those in the media who closely follow the game have, to my mind, been just as grievously culpable at kowtowing to, and finding simpering excuses for, the official party line. The exasperated, knowing public laugh at them as well.
Most fair-minded observers agree there are too many counties. And these Kolpak-kitted counties are merely emphasising the point that not enough English-qualified cricketers can be produced to fill eighteen counties. So the number will have to be reduced.
The Australian ’s Tim Albone looks at cricket in Afghanistan and finds their coach, Taj Majik Alam, desperate for his side to qualify for the 2011 World Cup and with bigger things to worry about than rain delays:
Alam has been threatened by a suicide bomber for not picking a particular player, one of the star bowlers has been shot in the chest and his training facilities amount to four nets.
New Zealand aren't blessed with an array of world-class cricketers and begin the series against England as distinct second favourites
Blessed with a role model in Taylor, New Zealand can now spread cricket far more quickly among the one-third of their population which is not of European ancestry. To date, out of the handful of non-white Test cricketers they have had, only the wicketkeeper on their last tour of England, Adam Parore, can be said to have had a fair go.
When Ryan Sidebottom was 14 he was told to go and find something else to concentrate on as he'd never make it in cricket
Ryan's mother Gillian thought something was up as he was unusually quiet in the car on the way home. When she stopped to drop off one of the other Huddersfield-based boys, she found out why — between the sobs and gulps and tears.
This Tuesday marks the 140th anniversary of the first team to play under a national Australian banner
The players have not been recognised as being among Australia's 399 Test cricketers - no full-blooded Aborigine is on the list - but they would have been proud to know that nearly one-and-a-half centuries later, the new generation of indigenous cricketing talent is as proficient with books as bats.