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You may or may not know that once upon a time we wrote a satirical weekly newsletter for a cricket magazine. It was fully excellent and almost everyone said so. Then the magazine’s new owners gave us the boot.
At this point, we started doing almost exactly the same thing independently in the form of Cricket Badger. This was not an enormously great idea because we did it for free, but the newsletter was still fully excellent and a somewhat smaller number of people said so.
Now Cricket Badger is no more. Last week’s issue was the final one (for the time being, at least).
Don’t be sad. There’s a very good reason for this seemingly sad development and the very good reason is that starting on Friday, Wisden Cricket Weekly is a thing!
Wisden Cricket Weekly is… well, it’s basically the same thing again, but with a different header and more links to Wisden stuff. There’s also a decent chance that we might get some snazzy dividers to separate the various sections (which is a prospect we are very much excited by).
If you want to sign up for Wisden Cricket Weekly (and let us tell you right now, in no uncertain terms – you absolutely DO want to sign up for Wisden Cricket Weekly), you can do so by adding your name and email address to the mailing list. That’s all you need to do (and it’s also worth mentioning that those details will of course never be shared with third parties).
So…
Sign up for Wisden Cricket Weekly here!
Ladies and gentlemen, let us promise you one thing: this newsletter is going to be weekly (we don’t want to make rash promises, so let’s keep things manageable at this early stage).
Done, but I’m slightly perturbed by the form. It asks for your First Name, Last Name and so on, and then leaves a space after each that says “Answer”. That sounds like a test. So now I’m wondering how well I did, and whether if I’ve failed I can do a re-sit in August.
Totally with you, Bert, I wasn’t at all sure what I was doing, what with the complexity of the questions and all. So I got my “friend” Ian Harris to have a go, then replicated his answers method.
If at first you do succeed, try again, I tend to say.
Not sure, but August is a long way off. They might not want a newsletter by then.
If I let some friends copy my answers, will that mean I get multiple emails?
We should point out that this isn’t a solo endeavour. Ed steps in and inserts a load of typos after we’ve done the meat of the thing.
Who’s Ed? That suit-wala guy you wrote about a couple of days ago?
Whoever he is, he must be thinking… ‘cheeky bugger’. It’s probably fair though.
Is this like when R.E.M. moved from I.R.S. to Warners?
Or more like when the Milltown Brothers moved from Big Round Records to A&M?
What I’m asking, I suppose, is will you have to rerelease Apple Green several times with barely noticeably different remixes to a stubbornly indifferent reception?
Will you King Cricket?
Because I for one hope not. Congratulations, I suppose.
It’s… more like the REM one?
Well that’s alright then. You’ve got a few years of world domination before you release your equivalent of Around the Sun, disappointing everyone.
Reveal wasn’t all that hot. They peaked with Up.
I liked the old one. I also took the Badger but then did not. How did that happen? Did I cancel? That would be most unlike me as it would require some sort of independent agency that I all too often find lacking in myself. Hmmm.
But I shall take this new one.
What though is the business model? Are you Facebook-like, hiving subscriber’s details off to Cambridge Banal-ytica and the such? All those quizzes about what is your West Indian fast bowler’s name and the like now look highly suspicious in light of the “personality test” that conned all that personal info from Facebook muggins into the nefarious hands of the Cambridge Shallow-lytica mob.
Will we be subliminally targeted to oppose the appointment of Ed Smith as head of the England selectors? Is it already happening? Were those ads for Russian lassies that used to appear beside KC’s daily cricket musings really planted there by Cambridge Anal-ytica with the aim of having us all collude in the downfall of former IPL head honcho Lalit Modi? With Kremlin backing?
We should be told!
Mostly it’s just about trying to get people to buy Wisden Cricket Monthly or whatever.
Well, I never. King Cricket and Cricket Badger are linked? And now this Wisden Cricket Weekly? Next thing you’ll be telling us is that the same chap does the Tour de France on TV thingy as well. Unbelievable.
100 balls?
So (a) only 20 fewer than T20 and (b) not a number divisible by 6?
“The concept could see innings consist of 15 traditional six-ball overs, and a final 10-ball over.
Those devising the city-based competition believe a 100-ball ‘countdown’ would attract new audiences and be popular with broadcasters. ”
So the final over if every ball is legitimate could get taken for 60?
Who’d be a bowler, eh?
One less person per team, presumably.
If you’re working for Wisden now, can you ask Lawrence Booth to get a job at a less fascist paper?
20 overs was too long?
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/apr/19/ecb-unveil-plans-100-ball-domestic-cricket-tournament
> “Based on fifteen traditional six-ball overs, the other ten balls will add a fresh tactical dimension,” added Sanjay Patel, the ECB’s chief commercial officer. “Crucially, this will also help differentiate this competition from Vitality Blast and other T20 competitions worldwide.”
Oh, do fuck off.
AAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA
Coming soon: Sixteen16? Hundred100?
This makes a great deal of sense to me.
Those middle overs, 7 to 15, tend to be so darned dull in those T20 matches. Let’s halve the number of “middle overs” and make the whole thing so much more exciting.
Leave the longer form of the game (T20) behind for the old know-nothing dinosaurs who purport to love cricket.
Is this sort of like a ‘sideways look at cricket’ type thing?
Curse you, Pardew.