Ryan Sidebottom

What Ryan Sidebottom should do next

Generally likeable, weirdly tetchy and a world-beater for an oddly unexpected and brief period of time. We’ll miss Ryan Sidebottom now that he’s retired from international cricket.

On the plus side, he’s one step closer to that BRILLIANT sitcom we came up with.

We’re open to offers.

Ryan Sidebottom takes 7-47

A week or so ago, we wondered whether Steve Harmison’s underlying lack of confidence was the result of not feeling like he’d earned his place in the England team. With six years and hundreds of first-class wickets between his first and second Test appearances, Ryan Sidebottom must feel the opposite.

Sidebottom’s got confidence that he’s doing the right thing, even when things aren’t going his way. He bowled well in Sri Lanka to no great effect, but in New Zealand he’s picked up huge armfuls of wickets every time he’s been given the ball. The difference?

“I’ve not really changed anything, just tried to put the ball in the areas as many times as possible and sometimes you get the nicks sometimes you don’t.”

New Zealand v England, third Test at Napier – day two
England 253 (Kevin Pietersen 129, Tim Southee 5-55)
New Zealand 168 (Stephen Fleming 59, Ryan Sidebottom 7-47, Stuart Broad 3-54)
England 91-2

Ryan Sidebottom does the necessary

We said after the last Test that you need spectacular performances to win Tests and you also need them to give you some breathing room in case of a bad day. England got away with one day of buttery fingers thanks to Tim Ambrose’s hundred and James Anderson’s five wickets.

Ryan Sidebottom got England across the line however, because he’s the very picture of reliability right now. Not literally – if you look at his picture, you think: ‘Get away from me, hippy. How about getting a hair cut and buying some shoes? No, I don’t want to smoke some moss near that weird bit of rock on top of the hill.’

We hope Ryan Sidebottom and Andrew Strauss are getting on well. They should make a really poor-standard sitcom about them.

He’s an uptight businessman with a classical education while he’s a laid-back drop out. For some hugely-contrived reason, they have to share a house together. Andrew can’t understand why Ryan doesn’t open his post as soon as it’s come through the door. Ryan can’t understand why Andrew gets so worked up when the chickens go upstairs and sleep on his bed. All the neighbours think they’re gay.

What japes.

New Zealand v England, second Test at Wellington – day five
England 342 (Tim Ambrose 102, Paul Collingwood 65, Mark Gillespie 4-79, Jacob Oram 3-46)
New Zealand 198 (Ross Taylor 53, Daniel Vettori 50 not out, James Anderson 5-73, Paul Collingwood 3-23)
England 293 (Alastair Cook 60, Paul Collingwood 59, Jacob Oram 3-44)
New Zealand 311 (Brendon McCullum 85, Ross Taylor 55, Ryan Sidebottom 5-105)

Ryan Sidebottom’s hat trick

Three Ryan Sidebottoms, that’s what we’ve been campaigning for. He’s exceptional.

Sidebottom actually started on a hat trick, having taken two wickets in two balls at the end of New Zealand’s first innings. He failed, but no matter, another hat trick opportunity soon arose. They’re nothing special. There’s nothing out of the ordinary in taking three wickets with consecutive deliveries.

Alastair Cook caught the first two and they were blinders. Prior to this Test, Alastair Cook was considered at best a mediocre fielder, but he’s taken about five jaw-dropping catches over the last four days; five real eye-catchers. We’ve never seen such a transformation.

The flipside of this is that England have effectively set themselves a stiff target where they’d probably just expected to have to bat out a short amount of time previously. New Zealand will be quite happy with this, we suspect.

New Zealand v England, first Test at Hamilton – day four
New Zealand 470 (Ross Taylor 120, Jamie How 92, Daniel Vettori 88, Brendon McCullum 51, Ryan Sidebottom 4-90)
England 348 (Paul Collingwood 66, Michael Vaughan 63, Tim Ambrose 55, Jeetan Patel 3-107)
New Zealand 147-8 (Stephen Fleming 66, Ryan Sidebottom 5-37, Monty Panesar 3-33)

Will Ryan Sidebottom take wickets in Sri Lanka?

We’ve written a proper article. Being as that’s totally inappropriate for this site, we’ve hidden it away off the main page.

So if you’d like to read a totally illogical article about Ryan Sidebottom worrying that he won’t take wickets in Sri Lanka on the rather spurious grounds that Chaminda Vaas, an entirely different cricketer, hasn’t taken wickets in England or India, then have a read.

We promise we’ll put something more appropriate up later today.