Warne up to old tricks

It must be dumb leg-spinner month in the Aussie Cricket camp. Shane Warne has done it again...for a guy with such a brilliant cricket brain, he must be seriously stupid, or supremely arrogant...or perhaps both.

This latest (surely last) scandal and embarassment for Simone Warne really shows what a joke all those "heart-felt" comments about family, upon retirement and Parkinson interviews really were...

(The Age)

MacGill up to old tricks

I see where Stuart MacGill has just been fined for more bad behaviour.

Sometimes I think he'd rather have excuses and reasons for not making it, than actually make it. He really has an uncanny ability to get people of side doesn't he?

Ian Chappell's view for Twenty20

Ian Chappell is making some real sense here (shock horror!) in his vision for Twenty20, the role it could play and how it could help make the World Cup a more relevant (and short) tournament again.

Nice Blog!

Maybe I'm behind the times as this site is certainly getting more traffic than STUmpcam, but here's a nice looking cricket blog I just discovered - The Cricket Watcher's Journal - nice.

The return of the Dibbly Dobbly bowlers to T20 (Two Up) cricket

I admire how New Zealand consistently punch well above their weight on the cricket field - more so I feel in the one day arena. I feel, in the "pre-Bond" era at least, they owed a lot of their ODI success to a string of what we used to refer to as "dibbly-dobbly" medium pacers - Chris Harris springs to mind. They were just so hard to get away and could really "mix it up a lot" making scoring at the death, very hard, but in the Test arena didn't have the pentration required to dominate for a full two innings or take 20 wickets.
In then stands to reason that in this further condensed (T20) version of the game, the same would hold true. While the cream will always rise to the top in Test Cricket, the more we condense the other forms of the game, the more unpredictable the results will get.
Maybe we could play just 5 overs, or one over, or for pure unpredicable edge of your seat entertainment, lets just toss the coin and leave it at that. (Hang on, the Aussie's have that covered as well - it's called Two Up!)

Growing up...or mid-life crisis...

Followig in Shane Warne's "hair loss replacement" footsteps (now is that an interesting mixed metaphor?), I hear now Rick(y) Ponting is insisting we drop the "y" in his name. I've often thought "Ricky" is a bit of a baby name, especially for someone you need to take so seriously when he's at the crease.

Makes you think, was Sir Don ever referred to as Donny, is his early days. (Now that's just bordering on blasphemy now isn't it!!)

Twenty20...the great leveller...

Zimbabwe has just toppled Australia in these sides opening game of the Twenty20 world cup, and Twenty20 has made it to the pages of STUmpcam....wonders will never cease.

In the ever expanding world of instant gratification, I guess we have no alternative than to attempt to start taking Twenty20 seriously... nah, who am I kidding, I couldn't really care less if Australia wasn't even there...but I will say one thing (and note I've been moved to at least type something on this site about the game which I vowed I never would), it is a great stepping stone for developing cricket sides.

Just like Sri Lanka's World Cup win in 1996 was a catalyst for their inclusion in "sides to be taken seriously in the cricket world", this Twenty20 one day world cup will provide confidence and "that winning habit" to some players in some of the more stuggling sides. Theses sides should (and no doubt will) be keen to take advantage of complacency from the bigger fish to strike a bit of winning form, and make a bit of money.

We see this every year here in the A.F.L. (that's Aussie rules footy) playing states of Australia with our pre-season matches, the big clubs put big players in cotton wool, and tip-toe throw the knock out competition trying to avoid injuries. The struggling clubs often take out the tournament (and decent prize money), then all returns to normal when the real stuff starts. It has however thrust some clubs on to bigger and better things in the past. Aussies will knwo, it has also spelled doom for the winning club in the past few years but now I'm getting off the point.

That point would be...Australia doesn't care about Twenty20 depite what Ponting say in the press in an attempt for political correctness.

Zimbabwe should care. Normally, a win like they've just had against Australia just could be a catalyst for bigger and better things. In this case I doubt it. Had this been Bangladesh, I would feel differently because it's only a matter of time now, before that country moves up a notch of two in World Cricket. Zimbabwe still has bigger problems to solve before that is a reality.

But,...no sour grapes here...good one Zimbabwe, now bring on England with at least the interest in a game where the Poms can knock Australia out of the comp and claim some minor bragging rights...let me think, would we swap the Ashes and the World Cup....no, probably not.

5 sixes in 37!

Just channel surfed my way over to Fox Sports and caught the last couple of overs of the 6th ODI between England and India. Had seen nothing of Shah or Mascarenhas, and while I haven't seen much more in terms of time, I've certainly seen quite a bit now. Shah brings up his 100, and Mascarenhas knocks up a quick fire 37, off 15 balls, and didn't get off the mark to 8 balls!! 30 from his last 5!

Awesome! (Scorecard)

Twenty20 looks positive for England then...

Spring...Cricket is in the air

After a collosul couple of years of cricket, starting back in '05 with that awesome Ashes tour, a few international mis-matches, a 15 month build up to the Ashes "revenge" tour, a 5-nil whitewash, then the never ending story that was the world cup, albeit, another Australian triumph. So this long cold Melbourne winter (cold for these parts anyway) inspired very little cricket related blogging. But the sun is out, the garden is growing, you can smell cricket in the air.

There is of course, plenty going on everywhere else in the world, and it's high time I dragged out the keyboard, and got busy typing more dribble...

There is a Twenty20 world cup coming up (also not likely to inspire much blogging just here - but I will watch), Shane Warne has graced us with his top 50 best players, the fortunes of ICL have continued to fluctuate and Sri Lanka and India are preparing to tour Australia.

I do feel moved to mentioned, a big slap on the forehead for to Shane Warne for that list too. As you may know, I tolerate very little in the way of Steve Waugh bashing of any kind around here, and while even ranking Steve outside the top 10 will not be taken lightly, to rank him below Darren Lehmann is just rediculous. Shane has elliquently illustrated how pointless these lists are, they are however, fun to do, and give us bloggers something to argue about hey?