If you’ve just arrived at work and you were planning on listening to the cricket, you could do a lot worse than listen to Test Match Sofa.

It’s not too difficult to explain what it is. Imagine Test Match Special broadcast from someone’s house and with absolutely no pretence of impartiality. “Mark Boucher’s gone. Piss off. Get back to the pavilion.”

It’s not just jingoistic cheering though. They get rightly carried away when there’s a wicket, but they know their stuff and the whole commentary’s full of the conversational tangents which are so much a part of watching cricket.

Even bad light’s enjoyable. “Cricket is the worst game. What sport develops into a position of supreme interest where the players then say ‘let’s go off’?”

When it was pointed out that cricket being ‘the worst game’ was somewhat off-message, that stance became: “Cricket is a wonderful game. I’m so enjoying this bad light.”

They should be on-air now and it’s totally free.

Tags: Cricket media // 10 Appeals »

Not so long ago, this South Africa batting line-up looked stronger than Geoff Capes crossed with a grizzly bear. Now? Not so much.

Ashwell Prince isn’t an opener; Hashim Amla might as well paint a bullseye on his front leg; while if JP Duminy could ever get past his first ball, we might get a chance to watch him being found out by the short ball. Even AB De Villiers is looking a bit rocky.

Batting averages only tell you what’s already happened.

Tags: Ashwell Prince, Hashim Amla, JP Duminy // 1 Appeal »

Never judge a pitch until both teams have batted, but if a side’s bowled out for 127 and they’ve chosen to bat, you can take a good long look at the captain and maybe laugh at him a bit.

Ricky Ponting should have been wary of Mohammad Asif, who’s probably the best bowler in the world at the minute, but he wouldn’t have worried about Mohammad Sami one bit.

Surely no frontline bowler in history has played so many Tests and yet had such a shit record. In his 33 Tests prior to this match, Sami had taken 81 wickets at 51.37. To put that in perspective, Ponting can consider himself the superior bowler with an average of 48.40.

That’s not the whole story though. Sami was the Next Big Thing once upon a time and has often hinted at being quite a bowler. He can bowl at 95mph and has both a Test and one-day international hat trick. Surely it’s some kind of sorcery to cram a hat trick into a Test bowling record that’s that gash?

Tags: Australia, Mohammad Sami // 5 Appeals »

Yesterday, we were presented with the following two headlines via our RSS feeds:

Taylor delighted by ’special’ MBE

and

Taylor charged after bar scuffle

Slightly disappointingly, Claire Taylor didn’t celebrate her MBE by going on an all-dayer that culminated in a drunken argument with bar staff because they wouldn’t give her any more change for the fruity. It was actually West Indies’ Jerome Taylor who was in the scuffle.

Just goes to show that it all balances out in the end. One Taylor gets an MBE, one gets pissed-up and scraps with a copper. Don’t let the Taylors tell you that they’re any better than you. They’re not.

Tags: Claire Taylor, Jerome Taylor // 2 Appeals »

You may not realise this, but the title of Lord Megachief of Gold is only granted for a one-year term. Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Lord Megachief of Gold 2007 and Grand Lord Megachief of Gold 2008, stands down. MS Dhoni steps up.

Why MS Dhoni?

Cricket is about winning. It’s not about hitting the fastest hundred or the most runs. Those are achievements in as much as they help you win games. Winning is the ultimate aim. MS Dhoni knows this.

Dhoni might not have scored as many runs as some, but he’s hit more meaningful runs than anybody and he doesn’t care how he’s done it. The man who can hit the ball further than anyone has been the ultimate second fiddle in a number of partnerships.

Dhoni in Tests

He only had six innings, but he averaged 92.25. In the Wellington Test against New Zealand, he arrived at the crease with India 182-5 in their first innings. Shortly after, they were 204-6, but Dhoni spurred the lower order resistance with his 52 before taking six catches as New Zealand were bowled out for 197.

In the first Test against Sri Lanka at Ahmedabad, India were 157-5. Dhoni hit 110 and India made 426 although the match then degenerated into a ludicrously high-scoring draw.

Fittingly, the year ended with him scoring 100 not out in the match that India won to become the number one side in Test cricket.

Dhoni in one-day internationals

There’s no shortage of innings here. Most people have Tillakaratne Dilshan as their one-day player of the year, but Dhoni’s scored more runs at a better average. Dilshan’s scored them quicker, but as an opener, he basically faces the same situation every time and really just has to score as fast as he can.

Dhoni has played all sorts of innings, but what’s most remarkable is how often he’s helped his side to a win. You don’t need to score at a run a ball if you get your side home.

Here are some of his best one-day innings from this year:

• 94 off 96 v Sri Lanka – India won
• 84 not out v New Zealand – India won
• 95 out of 188 v New Zealand – India lost (although that was hardly his fault)
• 124 off 107 v Australia – India won
• 71 not out v Australia – India won
• 72 off 53 v Sri Lanka – India won
• 107 v Sri Lanka – India lost (Dilshan)

Lord Megachief of Gold 2009

We identified him as one of the five best all-rounders over the next five years and even said that his haircut was as thorough and well-organised as dad when he makes a bookcase (compliments don’t come much higher than that).

Congratulations, MS Dhoni, you are 2009’s Lord Megachief of Gold.

Tags: Mahendra Dhoni // 14 Appeals »

It’s got to be done. Brace yourself for some links. Maybe bookmark the page for later but never actually read it. That’s what we’d do.

January

• Peter Moores said Liberty X were derivative and Kevin Pietersen said that Moores was an inbred Maxonian obsessed with wheelie bin collections. England lost their captain and coach.
• Some crappy batsman called Matthew Hayden retired.

February

• England got the bat-on-ball to ball-on-stump ratio wrong and were bowled out for 51 by Jerome Taylor.
• Sir Allen Stanford was found to be the kind of guy who’d step over a heart attack victim in order to return their shopping trolley to get the quid from out of it. He was charged with fraud.

March

• Australian spin bowling got clubbed to death.

April

• Rob Key took a wicket and therefore became the world’s first 100 percent awesome individual.

May

• We published the second worst picture of all time.
• We published the worst picture of all time.

June

• England foolishly played Holland to open the Twenty20 World Cup.
• Shahid Afridi bizarrely renounced pointless risk-taking, but still won the Twenty20 World Cup for Pakistan.

July

• The Ashes began and we all developed heart defects almost immediately.
• Andrew Flintoff announced his retirement from Tests because of the whole otter-fridge thing.
• Mitchell Johnson was shit.

August

• We had a dream about a cricket match at Headingley.
• England won the Ashes.
• Australia lost the Ashes.

September

• Weirdly, nothing happened in September. There wasn’t a seven match one-day series or anything.

October

• Brett Lee won the Twenty20 Champions League for New South Wales.

November

• Sachin Tendulkar rendered the result of a one-day match utterly meaningless with one of the greatest innings in defeat.

December

• India became the best-ranked Test side.

Anything else?

• We only published THE GREATEST POST OF ALL TIME.

Tags: King Cricket // 4 Appeals »

Hopefully no-one’s told him yet and hopefully he never realises, but England’s performance hinges on how well Graeme Swann plays.

Obviously, taking nine wickets for not a lot had a huge impact on how England won this Test, but nowadays Swann HAS to perform.

That’s not because England’s other bowlers are mediocre. They’re not. It’s because England are only picking four bowlers and Swann is therefore bowling far more than a quarter of his side’s overs. If he bowls badly, the seamers have to get through more work, meaning they bowl worse.

On top of that, being the sole spinner, Swann’s got to be the man taking wickets on fifth day pitches as well. His batting is merely a bonus.

We move that all words such as ‘talisman’ and ‘linchpin’ be reclaimed from Andrew Flintoff and are instead applied to the chinny tweaker.

Tags: Graeme Swann // 7 Appeals »

We wrote about Shane Watson and Ian Bell over at The Wisden Cricketer. We said that they weren’t hugely popular in their respective countries, perhaps because they were overly serious. We also said that Shane Watson couldn’t bowl.

Shortly after the post went up, both Bell and Watson scored hundreds and the commenters have laid into us, saying that these hundreds prove our article wrong somehow. You’ll love it. We get called an idiot, childish and are advised to stop working.

Also, if you want to see a spectacularly clunking repetition of the phrase ‘all manner of’ in an article about people taking guard in ludicrous and implausible ways, take a look at our latest piece for Cricinfo.

Tags: Ian Bell, Shane Watson // 10 Appeals »

Basically, through ambush.

They plod along, being solid and unspectacular and then in one innings in the field, they completely steamroller the opposition.

Think of England’s wins since Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss took over. West Indies were rolled for 152 at Lord’s; the same opponents were dispatched for 176 at Chester-le-Street; Australia 215 at Lord’s and 160 at The Oval; and now South Africa are in more than a bit of strife at 76-6.

It’s blunt, sudden and totally excessive. It’s like England are ambling around town for the afternoon, doing a bit of shopping, when suddenly they call in an airstrike on Poundland and make off with the products that remain.

Tags: England, South Africa // 7 Appeals »

Let’s examine the Ian Bell fact. You know the one: he only scores hundreds when someone else in the England batting line-up has already made one.

This has just happened against South Africa. Alastair Cook was first and then Ian Bell outstripped him with 141. Let’s just say that the above criticism does not apply today. Ian Bell can’t help what happens before he comes to the crease and he can’t do much more than make a hundred, so today he’s done very well.

So save the Ian Bell fact. Save it for when he fails. That’s when it means something. It’s not the hundreds he does score that are the problem, it’s those he doesn’t score. A second hundred in an innings is actually pretty handy and puts England in a far better position to go for a win.

Tags: Ian Bell // 10 Appeals »