The Surfer
BCCI warns Australia over Pakistan pullout
The Indian board has warned Cricket Australia not to cancel its team's tour to Pakistan, which seems under threat over security concerns.
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
The Indian board has warned Cricket Australia not to cancel its team's tour to Pakistan, which seems under threat over security concerns.
Rajiv Shukla, the BCCI vice-president, was quoted by the Daily Telegraph:
There will be serious consequences because you can't just pull out [of] a committed tour when the host board is giving you assurances about security and so is the government.
If the host board and government is willing to give assurances, you have to accept that. You can't just cancel a confirmed FTP [Future Tours Programme] tour.
Fleming's achievement was to fuse difficult personalities
Writing in the New Zealand Herald , Adam Parore offers his tributes to his former team-mate and skipper Stephen Fleming.
Sriram Veera
25-Feb-2013
Writing in the New Zealand Herald, Adam Parore offers his tributes to his former team-mate and skipper Stephen Fleming.
"There was a hard core of players in the New Zealand team, strong-minded individuals who needed some handling. Think of Chris Cairns, Dion Nash, Craig McMillan, Nathan Astle, Chris Harris and yours truly ... The couple of years preceding his appointment were turbulent. Things had been difficult when Glenn Turner was coach, but Fleming won the respect of the players."
Parore, who had earlier criticized the selection of Jesse Ryder, saying that international cricket has no place for fat men, offered his congratulations to the young man. " I tip my hat to Jesse Ryder. He copped plenty of flak from me, and others, when he was chosen to play England, but he came in and did exceptionally well in Hamilton. He took the criticism, kept his mouth shut and let his bat do his talking. It's not easy to go out and play in that manner in an ODI. Ryder gave a pretty strong response to those who'd doubted whether he was ready. Good luck to him."
Full postNets set up fabulous Gilchrist goodbye
Sriram Veera
25-Feb-2013
Adam Gilchrist got to the nets early before his farewell hundred at the WACA, Jon Pierik reports in the Courier-Mail.
More than two hours before play started against Sri Lanka, Gilchrist was working on his timing through repeated throwdowns from coach Tim Nielsen. Frustrated by an unlucky duck at the MCG last Sunday, the soon-to-retire Gilchrist was determined to do well for the last time in his adopted home city of Perth.
The many faces of Twenty20
In the Australian the columnists Patrick Smith and Mike Coward have different views on the growth of Twenty20
Sriram Veera
25-Feb-2013
In the Australian the columnists Patrick Smith and Mike Coward have different views on the growth of Twenty20. Smith is in favour of the development while Coward is horrified.
“There is room for all types of cricket and the sport must accommodate all of them,” Smith writes. “Twenty20's greatest strength is that it gives access to a new audience. It is attractive to families because it is done with in three hectic hours.”
Coward cannot believe how quickly things have changed.
The avarice and hypocrisy has been breathtaking. Players and governors are kowtowing before the god of mammon and thereby hurting and alienating the loyal shareholders ... Time and again the game's legislators have said the growth of Twenty20 cricket will not be achieved at the expense of the sanctity of Test match cricket.
The club versus country phenomenon
Harsha Bhogle, in his column in the Indian Express , talks about the need for all sides to understand each other - and for Indian fans to come to grips with the club versus country phenomenon.
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
Harsha Bhogle, in his column in the Indian Express, talks about the need for all sides to understand each other - and for Indian fans to come to grips with the club versus country phenomenon.
In course of time, the equivalent of the four hundred yards after a Mumbai traffic signal, there will be order again and people will know where they stand. But while that happens, people will do what they think right. However, they will have to co-exist, like the BMW does with the auto-rickshaw, and to be able to do that they must understand each other, appreciate that they need each other, that everybody has a right to be on the road, and that therefore, one is not necessarily more correct than the other.
The lesson from this year’s tour of Australia is that world cricket needs India and Australia to understand each other and their cultures better. Hawkish, sensationalist, stances don’t help. India has the money, Australia play cricket better and harder than the others, the two need each other. Arranged marriages still work, they are still honourable.
Full postReflections on a distracted 'genius'
Yuvraj Singh’s life sketch at the moment is incomplete, writes Pradeep Magazine in the Hindustan Times
Siddhartha Vaidyanathan
25-Feb-2013
Yuvraj Singh’s life sketch at the moment is incomplete, writes Pradeep Magazine in the Hindustan Times. Whether on completion it will remind people of a genius who lived life on his own terms or of a man who frittered away God’s benedictions, no one knows.
Full postThe images of film star Deepika Padukone failing to get a chance to applaud her friend’s stroke play from the galleries did nothing to douse these rumours and as the tour is now almost coming to an end, the man who everyone believed would be the king, has lost his crown even before he could wear it.
17 years and 104 days
At 17 years and 104 days, Sydney schoolgirl prodigy Ellyse Perry will make cricket history at a fittingly historic venue when she pits her all-round talents against the Ashes holders at Bradman Oval in Bowral as the youngest Australian Test cricketer
Kanishkaa Balachandran
25-Feb-2013
At 17 years and 104 days, Sydney schoolgirl prodigy Ellyse Perry will make cricket history at a fittingly historic venue when she pits her all-round talents against the Ashes holders at Bradman Oval in Bowral as the youngest Australian Test cricketer. The Sydney Morning Herald has more.
Full post"I was in year nine at Pymble Ladies' College, and I like to follow women's cricket as much as I can, so I was at home cheering the girls on"
'The Man United of cricket'
A report in The Times says that MCC and Middlesex are considering a merger to create a team that would reduce the gap between first-class and Test cricket
Andrew McGlashan
25-Feb-2013
A report in The Times says that MCC and Middlesex are considering a merger to create a team that would reduce the gap between first-class and Test cricket. Middlesex have been tenants at Lord's since 1877 and the idea would be use MCC's wealth and expertise to form, what MCC chief executive Keith Bradshaw has billed, "The Manchester United of cricket". Ivo Tennant has the full story.
MCC, which owns Lord’s and has a missionary role in Britain and overseas – and does not play in any established competition – would become the dominant partner in the pooling of resources and assets...
It would tie in with the planned £100 million development of Lord’s, which may incorporate an academy for promising cricketers. “Keith and I will be looking at all options over the next year,” Vinny Codrington, the Middlesex secretary, said. “We have to have an open and honest debate.”
Full postRetirement reality finally hits Gilly
Adam Gilchrist is set to play his final match in front of his adopted home ground, the WACA, when he takes guard against Sri Lanka today
Kanishkaa Balachandran
25-Feb-2013
Adam Gilchrist is set to play his final match in front of his adopted home ground, the WACA, when he takes guard against Sri Lanka today. The crowd which booed Gilchrist more than 13 years ago in his first game for Western Australia, as a replacement for local legend Tim Zoehrer, will give him a very different reception. And the emotion is hitting him by the day, says Ricky Ponting. Read on in the Australian.
"He probably won't like me saying this but when I was batting in Sydney during the second game against Sri Lanka, in the middle of one of the overs he came down and had a bit of a chat. "He looked at me and said, 'I'm going to miss this. I'm going to miss being out here with you and I'm going to miss all the good times we've had on the field'.
The name game
There are 480 letters, 59 words, 15 members and one team, writes GS Vivek in the Indian Express
Siddhartha Vaidyanathan
25-Feb-2013
There are 480 letters, 59 words, 15 members and one team, writes GS Vivek in the Indian Express. With an average of 32 letters per name, this team is the longest named international cricket team, which contains 23 of the 26 alphabets in the English dictionary except q, x and z.
Uda Walawwe Mahim Bandaralage Chanaka Asanka Welegedera is the cricketer with the longest initials in world cricket and has one more than existing record holder Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas.