Fat men can play

Jesse Ryder, the New Zealand batsman who was criticised by former international Adam Parore for being too fat, has found support from Hamish McDouall, who takes on Parore in his blog Googlies and Grass Stains.

When Ryder was selected a couple of weeks ago Adam Parore launched. Ryder had a bad attitude and was too fat. Parore invoked portly Jock Edwards and David Boon as examples of players who would not be selected in today’s fitness-conscious environment.

On the bad-attitude charge it was surely a case of the pot dropping a line to the kettle to indicate the kettle was of darker hue. In the first few years of his international career Parore was a disaster zone in pads - the kind of player who should have klaxons sounding when he walked into a dressing room.

As for Ryder being too corpulent, I say if you’re good enough you’re thin enough. Parore after all played alongside Craig McMillan, a fairly large chap, for half his career, and played against the likes of Inzamam and Merv Hughes, neither of whom regularly ignored a pie-warmer. Shane Warne was never trim the entirety of his career, and is the greatest player of our generation. Parore, at his peak, had a wonderfully sculpted body - I know, I saw it when he took off his shirt in a bar in the West Indies trying to impress some American medical students. Chat-up lines clearly weren’t his thing. But why come out swinging at Jesse Ryder? Why not let Ryder do the swinging?

The New Zealand Herald's David Leggat feels that Ryder answered his critics with a brisk 22 and a wicket on his Twenty20 debut against England

Meanwhile, Paul Holden, in his blog Sideline Slogger, pokes fun at England's Twenty20 squad in an article titled 'A slogger's guide to England'.