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?!"

The best part of the match

While the West Indies are going out of their way to lose, Tim Bresnan is assaulting his fellow players, particularly Swanny:

I promise you, if there was something better going on in the field, I would be talking about it. Unfortunately, there isn't, so all I have is light insinuations of strange happenings.

More Onion Jokes

This time it's Chris Gayle behind them. Excellent, I love a West Indian who can joke, and extend his stay in the IPL for the good of his broken team, obviously forgetting the rather lucrative contract he had signed.

That is the kind of man who ought to be making Graham Onions jokes.

On Tim Bresnan and England's very own stinker:

"I don't known nothing about them, I haven't seen them, not even tasted onion."

Okay, so he could have worked on the execution a bit, but it's pretty snappy for an impromptu effort. Snappy, I like it.

Of course, Gayle has no idea what he's in for with Onions. If you try cutting him down on the field, he'll just make you cry.

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.