Realistically, there was only one story from today’s play. We’re talking of course of Jacques Kallis’s new ‘comfortable’ appearance.

Now we like a fat cricketer as much as the next man - maybe even more than the next man - but we don’t appreciate Jacques Kallis’s late-to-the-party attempts.

Our idea of a fat cricketer is someone who truly devotes himself to the role. Ian Austin: there was a fat cricketer with true natural ability. He didn’t faff around with a slight physique for years. He got straight in there. He was fat from the off.

Mark Cosgrove’s another cricketer with gluttony and sloth in his big, big bones. He’s the kind of man who won’t even pay lip service to a fitness regime, because his lips are permanently occupied with cream cakes. Mark Cosgrove is actively working on gaining more weight. This is our kind of hero: one you can believe in and also laugh at when they try to do up their shoelaces.

Jacques Kallis is just a wannabe. Mark Boucher too.

We’ve just realised we’ve already written about fat South Africans, but no matter - it’s not something anyone’s ever likely to get tired of.

Tags: England, Jacques Kallis, South Africa // 6 Appeals »

Not at Lord’s, obviously. That’ll be a rain-affected draw like usual. England will win the series though.

Why? Because it’s tricky playing in England. England supporters don’t realise this sometimes, but it is. Conditions are as tricky and alien to most nations’ players as Sri Lankan or Indian conditions are to England’s.

Pitches are greener, the ball swings more and, unlike some countries, England has its own balls…

The following South African players have never played a Test in England: Hashim Amla, Ashwell Prince, A B de Villiers, Morne Morkel, Paul Harris and Dale Steyn. That’s over half of their team. Some of them have played county cricket or league cricket, but still - they’ll have to learn fast.

Of the others, most have struggled a bit over here. Neil McKenzie’s career batting average drops from 38.39 to 31.66 in England, although those innings were during his first, rubbish career, so maybe we should ignore that.

Jacques Kallis averages 37.07 in England versus 57.14 overall. That’s a bigger gap than the one in his skull.

Mark Boucher averages three less with the bat in England, Makhaya Ntini averages eight more with the ball. Graeme Smith’s English record is as huge as his torso, but after scoring 600-and-odd runs in his first three innings, his subsequent record is as conspicuously undersized as his weirdly ill-proportioned mouth.

These statistics are a whole load of nothing really, but it gives an idea of what the South Africans are up against. They’re not going to waltz in and turn England over as some people seem to think. England is a foreign land to some.

We’ve deliberately set this to publish at 11.20am, so hopefully England will have lost six wickets and we’ll look like the idiot we most definitely are. Either that or it’ll be raining. We predict that the Lord’s drainage system will be the true winner in this first Test.

Tags: England, South Africa // 6 Appeals »

Spigot of 4.5 Inches fame writes:

My first match! I waited a season and a half for the privilege of turning out for the Coleshill Thirds and when the call finally came, oh I was there. You betcha. Not least because it turned out we were playing Visitors - the most prolific multi-disciplined sporting team in the history of history.

Rendezvousing at the good, proper, centrally-located and very well appointed cricket ground, we then get a lift to the secondary school on the edge of town leaving the first team to play on the real pitch. A good half hour of “warming up” by collecting fag packets, chocolate bar wrappers and broken biros from the outfield was such a great experience and I didn’t think it could get any better.

I couldn’t have been more wrong as by the innings interval I was able to tuck into my “first day at school” lunch box of tasty sandwiches and posh cookies as prepared by the lady wife, leaving me feeling both smug and full, compared to everyone else sharing a packet of Quavers and a four-finger Kit Kat between the lot of them.

Either sides of the middle and at each end of the match, various people ran about for various reasons and no one was eaten by the moles. This included a Chariots-Of-Fire-esque reenactment of the 20-metre toddle, against my son, on the school sports day grass track. I beat him. Oh yes! Who’s the daddy? Me!

A great day had by all, largely except for anyone trying to play a 45-over game in gloom and light drizzle on a rotten pitch on a huge slope. To think that I was called just before all this ‘went down’ to go and do some out-of-hours support for the company I’m about to leave. How could I have possibly gone through with that when I would have missed all of this?

Tags: match report // 8 Appeals »

Because this is about Andrew Flintoff.

Flintoff hid a blinding fifty and produced match-winning bowling figures of 3-17 off his four overs in Lancashire’s stunning Twenty20 quarter final victory over Middlesex, which might conceivably not have happened.

One thing’s for certain though, a man/boy who doesn’t know the difference between a W and a V didn’t hit a hundred for Middlesex. Nope. No sirree. No way.

Ssh.

Tags: Andrew Flintoff, Dawid Malan, county cricket // 10 Appeals »

This is a guide to a few of the newer South African players. You shouldn’t cut it out, nor should you keep it. You should read it once, sigh and think to yourself: ‘I already knew all that. I remember when this site was good.’

Paul Harris

Paul Harris is a South African spin bowler. Don’t let his competent record fool you. He’s still a South African spin bowler.

Like all South African spin bowlers, he’s 29 already, even though he’s ‘new’.

Hashim Amla

You sort of remember him from when England toured South Africa in 2004, when his beard was all the more lovable for the short periods of time it was inside a batting helmet. It wasn’t a great series for Amla.

Unfortunately Hashim Amla has rather pushed on. In his last ten Tests - against New Zealand, West Indies, Bangladesh and India - he’s bearded three hundreds and averaged 58.8. It’s customary at these times to remove any scores against Bangladesh, so let’s do that.

Now he averages 64.4.

Hopefully this form won’t last and having hit a hundred in each of South Africa’s warm-up matches, Amla’s clearly frittering away his reservoir of runs at the wrong time. The hirsute fool!

Dale Steyn

Think James Anderson with another 5mph of pace and no bad days.

Morne Morkel

Morne Morkel’s one we’re looking forward to seeing. He’s fast and ludicrously oversized. Not ludicrously oversized in a lanky Steve Harmison way, more in an undue pressure on the pituitary gland kind of way.

Tags: Dale Steyn, Hashim Amla, Morne Morkel, Paul Harris, South Africa // 10 Appeals »

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 // Appeal »

Flex your typing fingers. Get them good and supple. You have quite simply GOT to have some comments about this quote from Andre Nel:

“When the fans go hard and abuse you, I love that.”

That’s a direct quote from a BBC interview. Apparently he said it ‘with a glint in his eye’.

Tags: Andre Nel, South Africa // 11 Appeals »

Sanath Jayasuriya might have pummelled a trademark hundred, but Ajantha Mendis won Sri Lanka the Asia Cup.

If you want to see some impressive bowling figures, read on: 6-13 off eight overs. Virender Sehwag had hit a 26-ball fifty when Mendis came on to bowl, so the young spinner basically just flat-out won the match.

Having one baffling, unconventional, once-in-a-generation spinner would be enough for most nations, but not Sri Lanka. They have to have two. Greedy swines.

Ajantha Mendis bowls ’spin’. He’s not bound by petty distinctions like that between off-spin and leg-spin. He bowls everything.

He bowls everything and then has the face-slapping audacity to add another delivery - the carrom ball.

Tags: Ajantha Mendis, India, Sri Lanka // 12 Appeals »

Ajantha Mendis’s ‘carrom ball’ does look to be pretty much a new delivery. Inventing a new delivery is a pretty brash thing to do. It’s almost like discovering a new colour or introducing a new letter into the alphabet. We should have all the deliveries already - cricket’s been around for bloody ages.

Doubtless people have done similar things before now, but perhaps not in exactly the same way and certainly not to the extent that the delivery’s been branded, as the carrom ball has. Maybe previous trailblazers just didn’t have a good name. You’ve got to have a name.

You can probably get a decent idea of what he does from the picture on the right.

His middle finger is bent down along the side of the ball. When he releases it, he flicks that finger, spinning the ball in the same direction as a leg-break.

He seems to have good control over where it lands as well, which is pretty astonishing. It might just get him the odd wicket, you know.

The name derives from the Indian table-top game ‘carrom’ where you use a similar flicking technique.

Tags: Ajantha Mendis, Sri Lanka // 8 Appeals »

Joe Denly hit a hundred. Go No Pants. Steve Harmison took four wickets. Durham still lost by a mile.

Essex beat Yorkshire.

The end.

Tags: county cricket // 5 Appeals »