Criminal past catches up with Umar Akmal
Lahore police today conceded that had it not been for Umar Akmal's prior criminal record, he would have been let off without so much as a slap on the wrist for his alleged misbehaviour with wardens after a traffic violation.

"It's true, if it weren't for that list of priors, he wouldn't have had to sit in jail for 12 hours and be facing the very real possibility of prison time for a simple traffic infraction," confirmed Zahid Nawaz, Assistant Superintendent of Police. "One wonders if Umar now regrets repeatedly committing crimes against fashion by wearing that hideous green lip-balm during matches," he added with a sad shake of the head. "It just goes to show that it simply doesn't pay to lead a life of delinquency and callous disregard for the law."

Little Seven continue to hold cricket hostage
The so-called Little Seven of cricket continue to hold the game hostage with unreasonable demands, pressing ahead with plans to disrupt the proposed restructuring of the ICC.

"It's bullying, plain and simple," said a spokesman for the criminally under-represented BCCI, which, for those unfamiliar with the acronym, stands for Board of Control for Cricket in India. "These lower-rung members are looking to impose themselves against the good of the game through sheer strength in numbers. It's not fair."

Among the many bloody-minded demands the Little Seven have made is the proposal of maintaining a "uni-tiered" or "tier-less" system of member nations that would selfishly see power and financial rewards more evenly distributed among all, plus a system of promotion and regulation in Test cricket that would unfairly favour Little Seven teams by, in fact, not existing as a system at all.

Many fans and observers are of the opinion that if the demands of the Little Seven are accepted, the integrity of the ICC risks not being compromised any further than it already has in recent times.

Broad walks the talk
Stuart Broad may have scored some points over Alastair Cook in the captaincy stakes by backing his words up with actions during what has otherwise been a miserable Ashes tour.

"If you recall, I'd said before the T20 matches began that England's batting line-up in this format is 'scary'," said a smug Broad at a press conference soon after his team lost the third T20 against Australia. "Needless to say, the results have backed up that frankly shrewd assessment: I haven't been able to sleep for days because of terrifying nightmares of inexplicable batting collapses."

Broad added that he had spoken to a dream interpreter, who told him that inexplicable-batting-collapse dreams were in fact very common, and in most cases merely a reflection of the dreamer's anxiety, in real life, of being an England T20 captain who had, for reasons best known to himself, ramped up pressure on his team by talking up his batsmen's chances in the face of overwhelming odds.

Canada loses ODI status it didn't realise it had
Cricket Canada has expressed regret at having been stripped of its ODI status, along with Kenya and the Netherlands after poor performances in the World Cup Qualifiers, as well as revealing that it didn't realise it possessed said ODI status to begin with.

"This demotion has come as a rude shock to the system," said the CC president, "especially considering we learned only last Tuesday that we even had a system in place for the game in our country. Had the ICC bothered to inform us in advance that we possessed this apparently much-coveted thing called 'ODI status', we might have tried harder to win a few games in the qualifiers."

Meanwhile, there were contrasting scenes at the cricketing headquarters of Papua New Guinea, where players and officials gathered to celebrate their promotion to cricket's big league, and indeed to pledge to learn as much as they possibly can about "this whole cricket thingamajig".

Confusion reigns as batsman starts to see it like a football
There were scenes of confusion in a club match recently when a well-set batsman suddenly started seeing the ball like a football.

The player had been playing normal cricket up until the moment he suddenly appeared to be afflicted by the aforementioned condition, known to affect batsmen who have been scoring freely at the crease.

"It was weird; everything was fine, and then suddenly the ball started to change character right before my eyes, growing to five times its size and developing black-and-white patches," said the visibly distressed batsman.

As people often do when suffering from this mysterious ailment, the batsman spent some time kicking out at deliveries bowled to him, before eventually having to be helped off the pitch after attempting to "head" a 145kph bouncer without a helmet.

Flower resignation explained
Andy Flower has stated that the reason he decided to call it quits as England team director is because he believes that the position should oversee all four formats of the game, namely Tests, ODIs, T20s, and diplomatic media management of one's indisposition towards Kevin Pietersen's continued presence in the team. Said Flower, "The latter is just too stressful and unpredictable a form of the English game, and I don't think I'd do justice to its demands."