'Happy birthday to the world's best-looking bald man'
Plus: golfing with chavs, the burning to desire to deliver punches to the groin, and other delightful stuff
Alex Bowden
04-Sep-2015

"And always, before you deliver, watch out for a grim chap with a scythe" • AFP
Beyond the cricket field, few players are held in such high regard as Kumar Sangakkara. People seem incapable of writing about what his future might hold without using the word "statesmanlike". It was therefore something of a surprise when his post Test career Twitter output followed the lead of that famously dignified ex-cricketer, Ian Botham.
Sangakkara says his account was hacked. How many hackings featuring genital photographs do we need before we can start referring to it as a "spate"?
Perhaps it's a lesson that even the greatest among us can be diminished by events beyond our control. Or, as Saqlain Mushtaq cheerily puts it:
Thanks for the uplifting message, Saqlain.
Things have been either squalid or dark thus far. Maybe it's time to embrace innocence. Sometimes a simple gesture can really make someone's day.
You'd think after countless summers in England, Shane Wane would have got to grips with the climate like now.
Summer in England is no drier than any other time of year. It's just less cold.
Shane should try and be more like Nasir Jamshed and just try and enjoy it.
What do you mean, sarcasm?
Rain or shine, you can always play golf. Alex Hales and Ben Stokes took on Sam Billings and Jason Roy this week in what Hales branded a "chavs v toffs" match.
So who won?
But in this writer's eyes, Hales was the true winner for this tetchy retort.
Yorkshire have got a major win under their belt as well.
Meanwhile, it was Tino Best's birthday.
Don't encourage him. He doesn't need compliments from other people. He's perfectly capable of supplying them himself.
Nor has age mellowed Tino.
Best's sometime team-mate, Kemar Roach, learnt that every action has a consequence.
It may sound pretty self-indulgent, but soon enough that bed becomes a prison cell.
Get up. Walk to the fridge.
Finally, somewhere in the world, there is always a cricketer complaining about some aspect of air travel.
Alex Bowden blogs at King Cricket