Brett Lee’s been caught out in an EVIL and WICKED lie. We always knew that genial smile concealed unparalleled deviousness:

“We’ve got the Ashes coming up as well which we are not directly looking forward to right now because we have a few things in place that we have to take care of first,” he said. “I would be lying if I didn’t say I was looking forward to the Ashes next year.”

Don’t give us that ‘I’m looking forward to it, I’m just not directly looking forward to it’ crap. You’ve told a lie and said as much yourself.

He’s crossed a line.

Before you know it he’ll be violently mugging the elderly for their fetching taupe-coloured clothing.

Tags: Australia, Brett Lee, England by King Cricket
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Jason wrote to us to draw our attention to his robust, adult, cricket/crime online novel that he’s writing.

Anyone launching themself into a venture like that deserves a link. It’s called The Curly Situation. WARNING: The novel does contain a reference to Flock of Seagulls.

Tags: Australia by King Cricket
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Is this the same West Indies side we watched letting balls through their legs at Old Trafford last year? With the honourable exception of Sir Shiv of Guyana they were a shower and were soundly beaten in the series by a rather flattered England side.

Australia seem to have had a few hiccups against them though. They were bowled out for 167 during the first Test, drew the second and are now 226-7 in the third. This isn’t very intimidating.

Australia will land in England this time next year. Come on everybody, there are only 365 days in which to pretend that things might turn out all right after all before reality ruins everything. Let’s make the most of this short halcyon period.

Tags: Australia, West Indies by King Cricket
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Stuart MacGill was fun. You never quite knew what to expect from him.

He wasn’t erratic in a Shane Warne kind of way. There was a certain consistency in Warne’s back page headlines. MacGill was creatively diverse with his odd behaviour.

He would shout at team mates like a nutter. He once read 24 novels on a tour of Pakistan. He refused to follow the orders of medical staff and often missed doctor’s appointments - even when injuries were threatening his career. He also turned the ball at right-angles and is among the top 50 Test wicket-takers of all time.

One of our favourite MacGill moments was just before the first post-Warne Test, late last year. The selectors were debating the side and he finally had the chance to be Australia’s first-choice spinner. Bizarrely, he chose this moment to tell the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘There is no doubt I am overweight’.

As a way of demanding a Test spot, it left a little to be desired.

Stuart MacGill looking like a psycho

Tags: Australia, Retirement, Stuart MacGill by King Cricket
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Not many people would be undersold by a title like Lord Megachief of Gold, but Shiv is. If you haven’t been paying attention to the West Indies v Australia Test series - it has been clashing with crucial County Championship division two fixtures after all - you’ll not know how the rickety crab’s been doing.

He’s been doing well.

He hit a hundred in the first Test and he hit an unbeaten hundred in the second Test. The world might be chock-full of things that are frightening and new, but Shiv is Shiv and we can all sleep at nights knowing that’s always going to be the case.

Tags: Australia, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, West Indies by King Cricket
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He has 10,000 of them in Tests. That’s the way you phrase it, isn’t it? You ‘have’ runs.

We’ve already written one update about Ricky Ponting where we referred to ‘rather spectacular motions‘. That was a rather feeble ‘rushed toilet visit’ joke too.

If you’re worried that the site’s becoming increasingly low-brow, don’t worry - we’re fairly sure we’re not going to falsely insinuate that Ricky Ponting’s got diarrhoea again. We’re going to wait until it’s true.

Remember when Andrew Flintoff had the wild shits?

Tags: Australia, Ricky Ponting by King Cricket
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In January we said that Andrew Symonds had disproved our feeling that he wasn’t the man you wanted at the crease if you’d lost early wickets and everyone rounded on us for not thinking he was the mutt’s nuts even sooner.

So we’re a bit uncertain what to say about his invaluable, counter-punching 79 yesterday. We’ve a vague suspicion that the title of the update has more bearing than the content itself, so we’ll test that.

Australia were 18-5 when he came in and if that’s not being in trouble, then what is? It was a fantastic knock, wresting back momentum from a West Indian bowling attack that rather pleasingly thought it was of a Seventies or Eighties vintage, rather than the inspid modern equivalent.

Tags: Andrew Symonds, Australia, West Indies by King Cricket
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It never goes well. Matthew Hayden is very poor at executing his talking skills. Thanks to RC for pointing us towards Hayden’s latest attempt in an interview with Cricinfo.

Here are some highlights:

“I go to the middle, I mark the crease and I squat on the wicket. I feel grounded when I do that.” - a lesson for all young batsmen who accidentally launch skywards and orbit the earth when they’re supposed to be going out to bat.

“The zone to me is pretty much every time I go out to bat.” - Matthew Hayden will tell you that he’s the absolute best at modesty as well. ‘I am shit-hot at modesty’ he will say.

“As fine a cricketer as I am right now, I don’t think as a young player I had it right.” - See! Shit-hot at the modesty.

He also says that an opening partnership is like being in a couple. But we already know about Hayden and Langer.

Tags: Australia, Matthew Hayden by King Cricket
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Tim Nielsen had the following to say about Ricky Ponting’s four matches for Kolkata Knight Riders, during which he scored 20, 19 and two golden ducks:

“I am sure the opportunities to bat outside against net bowlers over there in India will hold him in good stead.”

Tags: Australia, IPL, Ricky Ponting by King Cricket
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Not us, obviously. Our luddism is far too deeply-ingrained. Other people.

Uncle J Rod has embraced the podcast. Actually, being as it’s J Rod, he’s more molested the podcast and stuck his tongue down its ear. They appear weekly and most surprisingly, he sounds like an Australian in them. We were certain he was French.

Also overdue a mention are The Atheist’s ‘viddy-blogs’. Early efforts are endearingly haphazard. The most recent, The Vaughan Identity, is remarkably polished and sleek, like a buffed whippet. However, our favourite remains Video 7, partly for the cameo appearance of a fez, but largely because of Tim Ambrose’s dismissal. Genius.

Please don’t draw any direct comparisons between the effort that goes into either of these sites and the effort that goes into ours.

Tags: Australia, England by King Cricket
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