Zaheer Khan’s sports lounge

We’re not entirely sure what a sports lounge is – it sounds oxymoronic – but Zaheer Khan’s opened one. It’s called Toss Sports Lounge.

It’s not really selling itself is it?

The other day, Zaheer was asking people to come up with a tagline for his new venture.

Guys, am launching TOSS sports lounge in Pune! Undecided on its tagline, so my team has put together – Write a Tagline contest for you guys!

— zaheer khan (@ImZaheer) April 26, 2013

We’re going with:

“Toss Sports Lounge – but come anyway.”

What’s your suggestion?

Adil Rashid and poor growing conditions

Being a young leg-spinner involves being told you’re amazing when you’re not. When you get a bit older and you seem a little less exciting, people tell you that you’re rubbish when you’re not. If you can bat as well, the extra novelty magnifies that first bit and also the contrast with the second bit. Such is life.

How old do you think Adil Rashid is? Don’t look it up; we’re going to tell you in the next sentence. He’s 25.

There’s a feeling that Adil Rashid’s progress has stagnated (perhaps he’s even regressed) but this is perhaps understandable as his confidence has taken a few knocks while those around him have been recalibrating their expectations. Confidence probably has a bigger impact on the performances of leg-spinners than it does on those who practise more prosaic forms of bowling and Rashid’s has been hammered because he has unavoidably let people down.

A leg-spinner short of confidence can serve up some real shod, but even one in form can often start a spell with a fair chunk of it before things settle down. How does a captain distinguish between rhythm-finding shod and the kind that’s there to stay? He just has to have faith really. Even when treated sympathetically, a young leg-spinner cannot always justify that faith.

It makes you wonder how anyone can ever find themselves bowling leg-spin at a high level. The world presents such a hostile environment. On the other hand, if a bowler can conquer this, you can be sure that you have a cricketer of rare resilience.

Perhaps this in itself has added to the reputation of the leg-spinner. When they do make it to the very top, they tend to be special, so we hope against hope that every young practitioner has all the right stuff. We see what we want to see, even though it (currently) isn’t there.

Adil Rashid hit a hundred yesterday, but expectations regarding his bowling are currently low. Maybe they’ve bottomed-out. Maybe they’ll now rise more realistically alongside his performances as a result of that fact. Or maybe he’ll completely corner the market on shod. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

2013 County Championship – chapter four

Two teams are on the same number of points in third place. We presume it’s the alphabet which decides how they are presented, in which case Warwickshire have really struck lucky with it being Yorkshire who are matching them. If they separate teams on the same points through some other method, don’t try and explain it to us. Life is genuinely too short.

1st – Durham

Durham push Middlesex out of the top slot after beating Nottinghamshire. They secured a significant first innings lead thanks to 153 from 2010 player to watch, Will Smith, but then found themselves needing to score plenty of runs in not many overs in order to secure the win. They made 184 in 20.2 overs and cricket writers up and down the land noted that number of overs and drew fairly obvious conclusions about what modern batsmen are willing to try and do and why this is the case.

2nd – Middlesex

Drew with Surrey. Chris Rogers scored 214 and cricket writers up and down the country noted that he was in Australia’s Ashes squad and wrote things about that. We didn’t. We just left it there.

3rd – Warwickshire and Yorkshire (unless Yorkshire are actually fourth for some spurious reason)

Warwickshire drew with Sussex for whom Chris Jordan earns another mention with 4-73. Yorkshire’s match against Derbyshire has already been covered.

The next chapter

Somewhat unexpectedly, all of the above teams are playing this week and all matches start on Wednesday. They’re all playing counties who aren’t currently in the top three.

A shameless advertisement for our cycling site

Shut up. We don’t do it often.

For the next three weeks (crashes permitting), Bradley Wiggins will be attempting to win the Giro d’Italia, the second-biggest race in cycling. You can follow his progress over at our other site. Like cricket, the Giro isn’t on ‘normal telly’ – not even the highlights – so our website could almost be considered to be serving a purpose.

If you’re interested, you should sign up for email updates. That is all. Sorry to have taken up so much of your time.

Rounded flat cap cricket

If you like certainty and clarity, two-innings cricket is not for you. The format presents you with details and only backs this up with context once the match has finished. Half the joy is in dissecting goings-on in order to try and shape that context in your mind’s eye as the match develops.

Unpredictable events demand constant revision of the picture you are constructing. Some people – idiots – hate this. They like to be told what’s happening in black and white terms. They deal in absolutes because they can’t work things out for themselves. Other people have the innate self confidence to cope with being wrong. They make predictions but they take more delight in the unexpected.

Flat cap cricket

Yorkshire, powered by Joe Root, are proving a joy this year. Last week, they were bowled out for 177 and then Durham declared four wickets down in their second innings, setting a victory target of 336. Yorkshire got there with Root making 182.

This week, they conceded 475 to Chesney Hughes and Derbyshire and then promptly made 677-7 in reply (Root 236, Jonny Bairstow 186). A draw in the offing? No. They bowled Derbyshire out for 163 with the solidly-named Jack Brooks taking 5-40.

Rounded cricket

You certainly can’t criticise Chesney Hughes, but it’s worth pointing out that he made 15 in the second innings and his team lost. First-class cricket isn’t just about the numbers – it’s about the situations as well. Thus far, Yorkshire are proving to be a team capable of winning in unusual ways. They have coped with difficult situations well, which tends to indicate that they are a rounded team. Things generally don’t go exactly to plan in first-class cricket, so you need to cover as many eventualities as you can. It’s also fascinating to follow for those of us who are happier wrong than right.

We wrote about Shahid Afridi for Cricinfo

Most of the sentiments have been expressed here before, only because this was for Cricinfo we made the article longer, more rambling and less to the point. We pretty much repeat ourself in every paragraph as well to really drive the non-point home.

That non-point is basically that Shahid Afridi is diminished by Twenty20 cricket. One of the comments then says that Twenty20 was invented for characters like him. We suppose that’s not necessarily missing the point. This person might conceivably mean that those who invented Twenty20 were missing the point, which is almost certainly true.

Another comment draws attention to the fact that Afridi’s batting has gone to shit since he retired from Tests, which is actually worth mentioning. They also say something intelligent about the benefits of his reputation when it comes to batting in the longest format.

How many Cricinfo comments do you have to read before you happen upon sense? Many, but it can happen. Well played, Stark62.

The best thing about Chesney Hughes’ 270 not out for Derbyshire

The best thing about Chesney Hughes’ 270 is that it brings some smashing first names to prominence. A Chesney is always worth celebrating, but it gets better than that.

Chesney Hughes is from Anguilla. He was advised to come to England by a man with one of the finest names in history. His mentor is none other than Cardigan Connor.

It may sound like a nickname for an Irishman with a penchant for knitwear, but it isn’t. Cardigan Connor bowled seam for Hampshire and took 614 first-class wickets. More importantly, he gives rise to quotes such as:

“I’ve been speaking to Cardigan at every interval.”

You’ve got to love someone who can so effortlessly make other people sound demented.

You people seem to like this sort of thing

It’s an image featuring 50 cryptic clues to cricketing terms. It’s called ‘Whatzat!’ The ECB have commissioned it and apparently there are international and county tickets to be won.

We’re crap at this sort of thing. It took us quite some time to work out why bowler hats featured so prominently.

If you click the image, it should take you to a bigger, interactive version.

The fact that you lot like this sort of thing is very bad news for us, because it means we have to continue opening emails from marketing companies on the offchance that another one of them will do something well, even though that is HIGHLY unlikely.

2013 County Championship – chapter three

There was a fair bit of noteworthy action in the County Championship this week. The good news for us is that we don’t have to write about much of it because it didn’t particularly affect the top of the table. The good news for you is that we therefore won’t feel we need to repeat our dull-the-first-time point about England players performing well in early season matches, because that’s kind of the theme of what’s been omitted.

1st – Middlesex

Still top and they didn’t even play.

2nd – Warwickshire

Warwickshire conceded a huge first innings lead to Somerset, for whom Alviro Petersen and Jos Buttler scored hundreds, but they then managed to hold on for the draw, finishing nine wickets down. Rikki Clarke followed his 4-70 in Somerset’s first innings with 61 not out in Warwickshire’s second, which is the kind of low octane competence we anticipated when we decided to monitor his performances this season. Varun Chopra made 108 in Warwickshire’s second innings and he’s a player many people are talking about, but not us because we can’t be bothered. Nick Compton made a second innings hundred for Somerset. That was something else that happened in this match.

3rd – Sussex

Sussex made 526, but drew with Surrey at least partly because it takes ages to make 526. Luke Wells made 208 before somehow contriving to get himself bowled by Vikram Solanki. Chris Jordan took 5-92 in Surrey’s first innings and it struck us he was having a good season – he also took six against Yorkshire – but then he took 0-63 in the second innings, which impressed no-one.

The next chapter

Sussex play Warwickshire next week in an early season near-the-top-of-the-table clash. Middlesex again take the week off. Lord knows what they’re doing with themselves. They’re probably out robbing sweets and vandalising cars and that sort of stuff.

Ryan Harris the role model

Fast bowling isn’t just about bowling quickly. It’s also about sitting around worrying about your knee. As such, Australia’s younger bowlers have the perfect role model in Ryan Harris.

Harris is injured again, which is pretty much his default status. Really, the news was that earlier in the week, he was fit – that was what was worth remarking upon. Now we’re back to normal and he’s had to fly home from the IPL after a debilitating workload of 12 overs in three weeks saw his Achilles tendon sustain some form of knackage.

Ryan Harris doesn’t look fragile. Like a potato, he appears lumpy and functional. He’s not like one of these gangly fast bowlers who move like puppets where every component’s stretched to breaking point. Those guys look like they’re made out of cooked spaghetti wrapped around raw spaghetti and you can easily see why something is likely to give way.

But yet Harris is the vulnerable one – particularly his legs. He’s still the best at this. He’s the one showing Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins et al. how it’s done.