The Surfer
Pietersen rips up form book
Following Kevin Pietersen’s match-winning 90 yesterday, which handed England a consolation win over the West Indies, Simon Wilde in the Sunday Times says form matters not-a-jot for him:
Will Luke
25-Feb-2013
Following Kevin Pietersen’s match-winning 90 yesterday, which handed England a consolation win over the West Indies, Simon Wilde in the Sunday Times says form matters not-a-jot for him:
When he has got his eye in, and there is a match to win on a good batting pitch, the form book gets shredded along with the bowling. Tell-tale averages, hard-won reputations, both are scattered to the winds. He knows that once the ground work is done, he can score at around two runs per ball against the seamers.
Passion saves Shane
Following a painful breakup with fiancee Kym Johnson last year, and a serious shoulder injury which made matters worse, Shane Watson has rebounded
Kanishkaa Balachandran
25-Feb-2013
Following a painful breakup with fiancee Kym Johnson last year, and a serious shoulder injury which made matters worse, Shane Watson has rebounded. He recounts the dark of his high-profile relationship split and how it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
"A year and a half ago when things turned bad in the personal side of my life I just realised I've got to have so much fun in my cricket"
Read the full piece in The Sunday Mail.
In the same paper, Glenn McGrath insists he is not washed up, and asks for more time to perform.
Full postI've been around long enough to know that every year is different and you don't have be a rocket scientist to work out that, if you don't perform in this team, you get replaced
Video of Vaughan on the Ashes
There’s a video of Simon Hughes interviewing Michael Vaughan at The Telegraph today
Will Luke
25-Feb-2013
There’s a video of Simon Hughes interviewing Michael Vaughan at The Telegraph today. After waxing lyrical about him (“he’s an impressive person”) to the audience, the talk moves onto the rise in popularity of cricket in England. It’s a corporate schmooze-fest for Hugo Boss, who now sponsor England, but Hughes’s (and Vaughan’s) dry humour still make it worth watching.
Full postGilchrist's decade of fulfillment
Ten years ago, around this time of the year, a promising wicketkeeper batsman set foot on the tarmac of New Delhi's airport at 2 AM, called upon as an emergency replacement for the injured Ian Healy
Kanishkaa Balachandran
25-Feb-2013
Ten years ago, around this time of the year, a promising wicketkeeper batsman set foot on the tarmac of New Delhi's airport at 2 AM, called upon as an emergency replacement for the injured Ian Healy. Still dazed, he stumbled onto his hotel room, trying not to wake up his captain, and four hours later, hopped onto the team bus and introduced himself to the rest. That cricketer was Adam Gilchrist and he didn't have to introduce himself again.
Gilchrist was at home in Perth in October, 1996, preparing for his third season of domestic cricket for Western Australia in the hope of making it to the international stage when he received a call telling him to catch the first available flight to India
Read the full piece by Andrew Ramsey in The Australian.
Full postFishing it out
Nishi Narayanan
25-Feb-2013
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Cricketers spend their time off from cricket in different ways. All that Matthew Hayden needs is his collapsible fishing rod. Hayden talks to Malcolm Conn of The Australian about fishing, surfing and Grandma's shepherd's pie.
In Galle, the famous southern fort city later devastated by the Boxing Day Tsunami, Hayden saw a group fishing off the rocks near the team hotel, just out of town.
"I noticed they were catching little mackerel so I took my fly rod down to the rocks and within the space of 10 minutes I reckon I had close on 300 people watching," Hayden recalled this week.
Full postThe highs and lows of Michael Clarke
Kanishkaa Balachandran
25-Feb-2013
Nicknamed 'Pup' by his team-mates, Michael Clarke burst onto the international scene with 151 on Test debut, representing the new crop of dashing young Australian cricketers. However, he has struggled to maintain the consistency expected of him, now having to fight for his place in the side. Clarke analyses his career so far, his endorsement deals, influences, and his determination to shake off the label of a one-hit wonder.
About the age of 13, when Michael Clarke decided he would play cricket for Australia, four posters adorned his bedroom walls. Three were of cricketers: Brian Lara, Michael Slater and Damien Martyn. The other was a picture of a Ferrari.
'Harbhajan cuts his hair. Monty is not cutting his hair'
Peter Roebuck visits Ludhiana to discover the roots of England's latest spinning sensation, Monty Panesar, and meets his uncle Pritpal Singh Panesar.
S Rajesh
25-Feb-2013
Peter Roebuck visits Ludhiana to discover the roots of England's latest spinning sensation, Monty Panesar, and meets his uncle Pritpal Singh Panesar.
Monty has had the best of two worlds. His background has given him dedication, spontaneity and fighting spirit. England had offered quietness, attention and opportunity.
Read the full piece in Sydney Morning Herald.
Full postYou earn respect. They did.
Jamie Alter
25-Feb-2013
New Zealand's progression to the semi-final stage of the ICC Champions Trophy may have surprised some sections of the public and media, but for Stephen Fleming the success has been hard-earned. Aggrieved at the lack of recognition his team received for their efforts on the international scene, Fleming's role with the bat has spoken louder than his words, feels Richard Boock.
Writing in The New Zealand Herald, Boock lauds New Zealand's effort - in particular, Fleming's captaincy and influence - and chalks up just where each member of the squad stands in the tournament.
Full postWhat is wrong with Stuart MacGill?
Robert Craddock asks the question in a comment piece in The Courier-Mail It's a shame MacGill has never been able to find inner contentment throughout an outstanding career
Peter English
25-Feb-2013
Robert Craddock asks the question in a comment piece in The Courier-Mail
It's a shame MacGill has never been able to find inner contentment throughout an outstanding career. You can understand early in his career, as a tempestuous youngster scrambling to get ahead, he must have felt a huge sense of frustration at being trapped in the jumbo-sized shadow of Shane Warne. But he is no heartbreak kid.
The true hard-luck stories of cricket are players such as Jamie Siddons, whom Steve Waugh claims was "as good as Mark or me", or Darren Berry, whom Waugh branded "as good as any gloveman I've seen". Neither played a Test. MacGill has played 40 and taken 198 wickets.
In Darren Lehmann’s column in The Advertiser he writes about how good it was seeing Shane Warne working with Cullen Bailey and in The Age he says Shaun Tait is a “real show” for the first Test.
Full postLiving Doll, pasty poms
So Australia’s throng of fans, cheerily known as the Fanatics, have a songbook for the Ashes to combat England’s notoriously boisterous and equally cheery Barmy Army
Will
25-Feb-2013
So Australia’s throng of fans, cheerily known as the Fanatics, have a songbook for the Ashes to combat England’s notoriously boisterous and equally cheery Barmy Army. The Courier Mail have a list of songs England can expect to “enjoy”, including:
Monty Panesar's Useless
Tune: My old mans a dustman
Monty Panesar useless, a poor old English chap
& when he's not spin bowling, he's visiting the quack.
He's useless in the covers, he's useless in the slips
And when he straps the pads on, he'll pass out with the yips
And...
Full post