Bitter Owais Shah Looks For Revenge

Mesmerising everyone with his rather large eyes, Owais Shah is out for revenge against the ECB. The place to start is defending his county's decision to take on Phil Hughes prior to the Ashes. For the unitiated, the best way to do this is to remove one of England's possible avenues for excuse if they happen to lose the Ashes series. Here's how you do it, Owais-style:

"I don't think you can say that because this one guy has come in and played with us for six or seven weeks, it's going to tip the Ashes in their favour or our favour. It runs deeper than that."

He continued, "In fact, you're only going to lose the series if your number 3 is an incompetent asshole, so we'd better hope England doesn't have one like that, eh?" Oh Shah, I know where you're going with this. It's alright, we understand. Ravi's not going into hiding either, he knows what a great person you are.

Meanwhile, it turns out Kevin Pietersen's Achilles' heel is in fact his Achilles tendon. Apparently he'd "disappointed" he won't get to play the Windies in the ODI series. Bullshit, he's the luckiest guy on the team and I think everyone knows it. Wouldn't Strauss just love to skip this pointless contest against a country they don't particularly rate, having now jumped their way to 5 in the ICC Test ratings.

On the other hand, England could very much want to play this series against WI. It's been a while since they've won anything for an extended period of time. Plus, it'll boost their career figures a little, particularly for the newer players. Wouldn't a 5-for do Tim Bresnan a whole lot of good ahead of his fight with Freddie for a place in England's side. Some fight that'll be.

"VOT?!"

AB takes Delhi to watch rugby

Apparently he thinks they'll be interested.

"We didn't do much off the field in Durban so now that we're in my home town on Saturday, I'm taking them to the big one, Loftus Versveld, for the Bulls' Super 14 match against the Western Force. We'll see how that goes!"

Probably went terribly. Gambhir wandered off and tried to prove his manhood once more with a couple of hot 40 year olds, Dilshan found himself converting to Rastafarianism, Sangwan burst into tears when everyone kept calling him "someone", Yo Mahesh rediscovered himself as a hip hop artist, Colly shaved his hair off and tried to smash Dan's glasses, Warner went around collecting volunteers who were willing to let him on for a stint at fielding, and Dirk... well, you don't even want to know what happened with Dirk.

Owais Shah didn't even go. He cried himself to sleep in his hotel room after receiving a call from the ECB.

How To Win The Ashes - Part 2

England hand it to us on a plate.

England's West Indies Test squad: Andrew Strauss (capt), James Anderson, Ravi Bopara, Tim Bresnan, Stuart Broad, Paul Collingwood, Alastair Cook, Graham Onions, Monty Panesar, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior (wk), Graeme Swann

Ravi Bopara muscles in on the Number 3 spot which was looking to be Ian Bell, Michael Vaughan or Owais Shah's pick. KP has somehow managed to avoid the spot altogether and made it look as though he was never having to consider playing at 3 to save face for England.

Graham Onions and Tim Bresnan are about to debut, but I'm sure Onions will have a stinker of a match. Geoff Miller's explanation behind these two selections was that

"They've bowled very, very well pre-season and they've bowled very well in the early part of the season. We need to find strong backup and one or two other seam bowlers who are of international quality and these two have out-bowled the others so they get their chance."

Onions is reportedly very pleased.

The ECB have done some good in leaving out Bell and Vaughan, but will you just look at the squad? The Ashes squad will be mostly similar, perhaps dropping some of the debutants, and with the inclusion of Freddie. None of those players going to the Windies look great. Maybe Strauss is on a roll, but honestly, who are they kidding? Hats off to not living in the past (i.e. 2005) and going with all those old fellows, but word is the Scots are already calling it shite.

Miller is excited about this new squad, and he thinks it's going to take England to great heights and open up closed shops and things like that. Didn't understand what that meant? Neither did I:

"I think it's exciting, we've been designated as a closed shop for some time now and this just shows to county cricketers that we are not a closed shop and we are prepared to open it up."

I'm sure I'm not the only person who didn't find that analogy all that great.

Monty will be opening up their shop.

Delhi Daredevils the "most balanced team"

I have been neglecting these fellows. But all you need to do to grab my interest is say something that sounds exaggerated in the slightest and I will be running as fast as my legs can allow to see what's going on.

TA Sekar, the DDD Manager, has said:

"Delhi Daredevils walk into the IPL with probably the most balanced combination."

This piqued my interest. Have I been lording over the other IPL teams with my support for Chennai? The answer is actually no. I am supporting the side that has an incredibly good chance of winning, but maybe I should second another team. Have an underdog side I'm supporting. Last year it was Kings XI Punjab, but they're looking shaky this year and besides, I'm just not in the mood to support them.

But Delhi. That's an interesting proposition.
They have Sehwag and Gambhir as openers. You can't fight with that, it's like the power couple of Indian openers.
Dilshan Tillakaratne. He did well last year.
AB de Villiers. Might convert Dilshan to Christianity.
Daniel Vettori. His glasses alone have the power to rock Sreesanth off his crazy horse.
Glenn McGrath, and he's said he'll be able to concentrate better on this year's IPL anyway.

And then there's the new players. The Delhi Daredevils picked up:
David Warner.
Dirk Nannes.
Those last two names are icing on the cake for T20.
And Andrew McDonald. I only mention this name because I reckon he'll be shit. His hair will attract cricket balls and tempt batsmen to thump balls at his head. However, I stand to be corrected if McDonald does turn out to do well.
They also secured Paul Collingwood and Owais Shah.

That's a pretty strong team.

England fucks it up again

No surprise there, only it was almost laughable this time. And not in a "We just won by one run because the Windies fucked up their maths" way. This was more of a "What a piss take, England lose by 8 wickets and Chris Gayle goes berserk and hits 8 sixes" kind of thing.

Andrew Strauss has had his head done in by this England captaincy.
Ravi Bopara and KP practically threw the ball to fielders.
Soon after, Owais Shah and Flintoff said "Fuck it, we're taking off" and kindly gave up their wickets.
Paul Collingwood is likely to be smug in the change rooms, being the only one not to actually get out, after a misjudged lbw call by Steve Bucknor.
Matt Prior was next on the loser train, hitting a ball lovingly to point.
Broad was next, making little impact on the side.
Then came Dimitri Mascarenhas and Gareth Barry, who thankfully restored a semblance of dignity to the side, putting on 48. But they were also out.

England made 117, and didn't even bat out the 50 overs.
But what's even more disturbing is the next part. The Windies had wrapped up the game in 14.4 overs, with Gayle's 80 from 43 balls doing much of the work for them.
England are now 2-1 down in the ODI series.

How will England ever show their face after this? This is getting ridiculous.