That’s ‘The Wisden Cricketer’ to you.
We won’t link to every piece of ours that appears on their blog, but we thought that today’s was ‘all right’ - and that’s a real high water mark for us.
It’s more about Neil McKenzie. We don’t feel like everyone really got into it when we wrote about him earlier in the week, so we’re practicing our ‘repeat until funny’ policy.
Mel writes:
The scene was set. Both sides had prepared for battle. The protagonists eyed each other with a sense of anticipation - who would triumph today? I talk not of the 22 men in pyjamas, but of a far more absorbing contest.
Crowd v Stewards.
Lengthy delay at security check meant many people missed the first ten overs. 0 - 1.
Your correspondent was told that she could not use her camera as it looked ‘too professional’ (it is not). 0 - 2
Crowd begin construction of several beer glass towers, all of which were confiscated by the Stewards 0 - 3
Semi-streaker (wearing a pair of old baggy boxer shorts) leaps onto the pitch and cavorts to the delight of the Crowd. 1 - 3
Semi-streaker apprehended by Stewards and led away as Loudspeaker Man announced that we are all very naughty and if it happens again we will be kept in after school and forced to listen to Geoff Boycott talking us through his 100 favourite innings. 1 - 4
Crowd ignore this warning and a streaker (this time sans undies) leaps onto the pitch and executes a couple of perfect sliding stops to avoid capture. 2 - 4
A Mexican wave erupts with the air filled with torn-up scorecards, beer carriers and copies of the Telegraph Sport. The Stewards look on helplessly. 3 - 4
An inflatable crocodile, football, tomato and banana appear and are tossed around the crowd - the Stewards again are powerless to prevent such anarchy. 4 - 4
An inflatable pink ball lands on the outfield and a kindly, helpful gentleman climbs over and retrieves it before it interferes with play. Stewards promptly escort said kindly, helpful gentlemen from the ground. 4 - 5
Crowd erupts in a cacophony of boos and call the paternity of the particular Steward into question. 5 - 5
Common sense prevails and the kindly, helpful gentleman is allowed back to his seat and afforded a hero’s welcome from the crowd. He was even asked for his autograph.
6 - 5, and a last minute win for The Crowd.
A far more exciting, action-packed and eventful contest than that taking place on the pitch.
Andrew Flintoff, Simon Jones, Darren Pattinson, Tim Bresnan. How bloody wide of the mark can the mainstream media get? Very. That’s how wide.
There’s the mark and…
…there… that’s where they are. Wide and perhaps a little bit low as well.
The real news is of course His inclusion in England’s provisional 30-man squad for The Champions’ Trophy.
Being as this squad will be cleft in twain on August the 11th, we’re not going to go properly mental just yet. But just to warn you, we’ve had something in our locker for ages now that’s so good it’ll make you sweat jam out of your pores.
If Rob Key makes the final 15-man squad, we will unleash it on the world.
We were going to wait until he got back in the Test squad before showing it, but attempting to stifle its iridescent brilliance for much longer might actually kill us. Cross your fingers.
Today categorising the blog post is a treat: ‘Rob Key’ and ‘England’.
Not literally under his captain. That would be painful, even allowing for Rob Key’s new, racing snake physique.
Against Surrey, Martin van Jaarsveld hit two unbeaten hundreds and took 5-33, even though he’d never taken more than two wickets in an innings before.
When asked what precipitated this rare spell of form, he responded:
“I’ve been having trouble with my backlift of late. I was trying to iron things out in the nets when Rob came past, mumbling. I think it was some sort of incantation because there was a sudden, blinding light and the next thing I know I’m in the physio’s room and my lunch money’s gone.
“Pretty much the same thing happened the next day and the day after that. By the first day of the Surrey match I was feeling a bit light-headed with having missed the majority of my meals, but there was a calmness in my delirium and everything just clicked.”
Van Jaarsveld then added: “The bowling was a fluke though.”
Umpires accuse Pakistan of ball-tampering. Pakistan refuse to play in protest.
After an investigation, Pakistan are found not guilty of ball tampering, but Inzy is banned for keeping his side off the field, so they’re saying that while he was right, he was also wrong.
Now the match is being reclassified as a draw, meaning Pakistan weren’t wrong when they refused to play. Ordinarily, if you refuse to play, you forfeit the match. By saying that they didn’t forfeit the match, this is tacit approval.
So Inzy got banned for correctly protesting against unproven allegations of ball tampering in a now acceptable manner. Is that where we are?
We’ve come up with an ingenious plan that will make England’s bowling attack the envy of the world: tell each of the bowlers that he’s playing for Durham.
Seriously. Tell someone - anyone - that they’re playing for Durham and they’ll take wickets. The presenters of Loose Women could take wickets in Durham shirts. Higgins from Magnum PI could get a five-fer.
Hell, even Ajit Agarkar could take wickets for Durham, just hand him the ball and point him at the stumps and he’d flatten batting line-ups like a steamroller flattens a plasticine Matthew Hayden voodoo doll.
Who’s Durham’s most successful bowler thus far this season? It’s impossible to tell.
Steve Harmison maybe, with 29 wickets at 23.10? That would be good enough for most sides.
Liam Plunkett’s just come back. He’s taken 6 wickets at 19.83. Mark Davies is doing Mark Davies things – 15 wickets at 21.93. Graham Onions has 13 wickets at 14.15.
That’s one whole overperforming bowling attack already, but there’s more. Ben Harmison has chipped in with nine wickets at 23.55 and Paul Collingwood has five at 12.40.
But still we’re not done. There’s also Callum Thorp.
Callum Thorp is a 33-year-old Australian who’s played just 28 first-class matches. In that time he’s taken 79 wickets. To put that in context, Steve Harmison, at 29, has taken 572. Even Paul Collingwood’s cracked 100.
Callum Thorp has taken 20 of his 79 wickets this season at an average of 17.65.
Someone tell us, does the Chester-le-Street pitch resemble that bit in our garden where we had a go at returfing?
He is both a cad and a bounder and you should beware his dandy ways.
24 first-class wickets at 40.62 and somehow he bowled Rob Key first ball.
Some facts about Jade Dernbach:
(1) His nickname is obviously - and also correctly - ‘Dirtbag’.
(2) He looks like a gone-to-seed Cristiano Ronaldo, only far less ugly.
(3) He would spend his last £10 on hair products. FACT.
One other fact that we like is that according to Cricinfo he was educated by St John the Baptist. At least that’s the way we’re choosing to read it, even if it is factually inaccurate.
It’s okay - it’s a good line. It’s the line you have to cross to get written about on King Cricket.
Tim Bresnan has been having one of those quietly productive seasons in which our Ones To Watch seem to specialise. Despite having taken more wickets than anyone else in division one so far this season - 29 at an average of 23.34 - his 5-94 against Durham yesterday was remarkably his first five-wicket haul.
Complementing his quietly productive bowling has been some quietly productive batting: 295 runs at an average of 49.16 with two fifties and no hundreds.
Liam Plunkett is making his first County Championship appearance of the season in the same match after playing a few Twenty20 games over the last few weeks. Plunkett is having a Bresnanian match himself. He took 3-70 and hit 68 not out, batting at nine.
Tell you what we like in cricket: we like people who made their names doing one spectactular thing in particular to do exactly that thing only at a slightly advanced age.
For example, you might say to a cricketing newcomer: “This is Sanath Jayasuriya. He’s famous for scoring runs ludicrously quickly at the start of one-day matches. He probably won’t do it now though, because he’s getting on a bit.”
But he does do it! Things are exactly the same!
No player deteriorates. Everything is exactly the same. The old, balding master is still infinitely more masterful than the trendy young kids.
Okay, so Benevolent Uncle Sanath’s 55-ball hundred was against Bangladesh, but we can go a bit overboard because it was his birthday (39) and he did carve up the IPL as well, don’t forget.
We’re doing some writing on The Wisden Cricketer website as part of our Care in the Community rehabilitation scheme. It’s okay - we’re being supervised.
The Wisden Cricketer is a friend to cricket blogs, so we feel obliged to link to their home page as well as our first blog post there.
The other articles on The Wisden Cricketer website are proper get-a-cup-of-tea-and-set-a-few-minutes-aside articles. They’re actually written by grown-ups. Go and have a look.