The Final

It is so close I can practically tell which teams are going to be in it.

Oh wait, I actually can. Sorry, it's just the IPL hangover, it still hasn't gone away. A tournament in 16 days would be blasphemy to sponsors and the economic sensibilities of a man who cannot afford socks.

So, Pakistan vs. Sri Lanka. WHO WILL WIN? I don't mind either really, but I had made some half-baked comments that I'd be supporting Pakistan so why the hell not? But after the amazing performance the Lankans had against the Windies, wouldn't it also be some kind of injustice if they didn't walk away with the trophy?

Dilshan's 96 was mindblowing and I fell asleep sometme after Angelo Mathews' first over which was pretty fucking brilliant. Mind you, if I was capable of staying up longer I would have, but my body just gave way. Looks like not much went on after that in the way of a dramatic turnaround by the West Indies.

England losing and other interesting stuff

About time, really. It's not like they were going to get much further in the tournament. It was already rather shocking they'd gotten this far. There isn't really much to say that others haven't said, except HAHAHAHAHA. Tossers.

In other news, New Zealand are afraid and I am afraid for them. The West Indies are through to the semis. Ireland have lost, just as they would. And India are blaming the IPL for their "fatigue", revealing the true purpose of the IPL, i.e. to provide a handy excuse for losing matches in the few months following it.

But more importantly, Albie Morkel is blogging (thanks to Boncam for the link). The sly devil can't help talking about his wicket maiden for an unhealthy period of time. It's okay, nobody minds. Why? Because he is too fucking awesome for you, mate. He also puts in some Aussie slang in a subtle acknowledgement that he reads my blog:

Also, he (ROFL) has a serious ‘bulldog’ factor. In Australia they say a sportsman like him has ‘mongrel’ in him.

Go you. Amongst other things, he details how he goes for a run through Hyde Park at night, baying at the full moon, to put that "country" mind at ease. Country? More like werewolf, Albie.

The warm-up week was a great success, the practise facilities have been excellent and the hotel is a very popular spot with the boys being right in the centre of London but also next to Hyde Park so the ‘country’ boys amongst us don’t feel too cramped!

Good stuff. Albie has also injured Jacques Kallis, in a show of brotherly affection, in order to get Morne a game:

But if there is an injury, he is raring to go.

The things he does for Morne.

In Die AB Watch, he's been going to the movies with some team mates to watch 'The Hangover'. Except I think he was too shocked by the sex jokes that he resorted to quoting the introduction of a newspaper review of the movie:

A few of the guys went to play golf after the journey yesterday, but I joined the group that went to watch a film called ‘The Hangover’, a fun comedy set in Las Vegas about three groomsmen who lose their soon-to-be married friend and then try to find him again.

Either that, or he's being sponsored by Warner Bros.

South Africa set a record

Most consecutive T20 International wins ever. But wait, was anyone actually surprised they won against the West Indies? On rolls the South African juggernaut as they flatten teams on their way to the finals.

Despite Chris Gayle's valiant attempts to distract them with some ultra-cool sunnies, the saffas did not budge. They've had good practice at this, especially after Stuart Broad's attempts to deliberately distract the South African batsmen. Also because once their eyes lock onto the missile, also known as the ball, they do not take their eyes off it, not even to look at Broad's delicate hands.

You know what's creepy? As I check Cricinfo for Kallis' bowling figures because they're pretty fucking funny, I see they have also spoken of the "South African juggernaut rolling on. I don't write for them, just in case you were wondering. My singular brain is on par with their collective brains, however. Jacques' figures are 2-0-23-0 by the way. Hahahaha, that's far too good. Fingers crossed he'll stop playing T20s.

I won't mention Albie's figures because this is my blog and I can do whatever the hell I want. You want fairness? Go somewhere else. He was brilliant, just brilliant. A wicket on a no ball which is better than no wicket at all, and a small error involving a wide which ended up costing 5 runs. BRILLIANT.

Wayne Parnell had to do even more this match to finally get the MoM award. 4/13 is the result of his mastering the art of bowling yorkers and actually bowling at the stumps. With all the creative shit bowlers are trying to come up with, it seems everyone forgot that simply bowling at the stumps and waiting for a wicket is remarkably successful.

Lendl Simmons is the only batsman on the West Indies side who should be walking away from this match with a smile on his face, although he might not be smiling because they still lost despite his 77. Seriously, the things some people have to put up with...

And now I come to Albie. You were waiting for it all along, I know. That 10 off 8, especially after the perfect opportunity presented itself when die AB got ahead of himself and got out on 17. After being promoted up the order to actually come in before the 16th over. That was amazing, that last bit. Everything was set in place for Albie to kill someone, preferably with his bat. He didn't, but the very clever Jerome Taylor was behind it. The smart bastard bowled a few bouncers and then nailed Albie with a great yorker. Even Albie appreciated that one. Super Shades Gayle had instructed Taylor to go about targeting Albie with bouncers and this is CLEARLY him going after the most dangerous batsman on the side. I mean, obviously. For this reason, Albie's dismissal was alright. He felt the respect as he walked off that field.

I think Nasser Hussain wants to marry die AB, just like every other commentator out there.

And in the current match, New Zealand are killing me. Dan the Man is playing but... they're killing me. They really are.

What I am going to do today

Today I am going to set aside a good five minutes to laugh at India.

I will then laugh at Dhoni for an extra special reserved period of time.

Then I will bake a cake, for reasons to be explained later in this post.

Next, I will watch Jacques Kallis get out for a duck, followed by another duck from die AB.

After this, I will watch Albie Morkel hit the ball out of the fucking park and pillage the same Windies that beat the '07 champions.

As I am doing this, I will cry tears of joy and blow out the candles on the cake, all 28 of them. I will say "ya did well, kid" to the television as Albie goes on to make a half century.

Then I will watch New Zealand destroy Pakistan.

All in a day's work.

West Indies win

Good stuff.

Not much to say except after the innings Gayle and Fletcher had, everyone wanted the Windies to win this match.

But I do believe there should be more cricketers named Xavier. "X Marshall" is the best name on the scorecards from both of these teams. Maybe you could even change your last name to "Treem" or something. I don't know, just saying. The possibilities are endless. Isn't there a BMX rider who legally changed his name to Kamikaze? It's be just like that, only CRICKET.

I think I need some sleep. Well done to the West Indies. They beat the Aussies with 4 whole overs (and one ball) to spare. That's massive. They didn't play close to a quarter of the time the Australians did.

The crowd certainly thinks the Australian loss is very appropriate. Never have there been so many West Indian supporters in the same place, more than half not even having geographical ties to the Windies.

Australia are going to lose

To the West Indies. You would think there's something wrong in that statement, and under normal circumstances there damn well should be.

But fuck, the West Indies are batting awesomely. Those first 5 or 6 overs were like a goldmine, and the best kind too. A boundary was practically expected off each ball. Not to mention Chris Gayle's absolutely massive six.

A fever pitch crowd baying for Australian blood. Looks like that wish will come true if the Windies don't magically fuck everything up, which is looking pretty unlikely and besides, choking is what South Africans do best, not the West Indies. A win for them will also happen a lot sooner if Australia continue to bowl the same excruciatingly high number of wides and no balls.

Brett Lee goes into the record books for that over from hell, I believe. 27 runs off it, the 4th highest in T20 International history. He's also lost a bit of the ol' pace it seems. Mitchell Johnson fared no better and was brutally savaged by Gayle and Fletcher. Australia gave it all away in those first few overs.

Will Gayle get one of the fastest centuries ever?

England doing something very strange

I believe it's called winning. Sure, it's against the West Indies, but they're still winning.

What is the magic formula? Why this great form going into a rather important series?

I'm very interested. I think I might even like it if England were supremely confident ahead of the Ashes. But there's always the T20 thing between now and then to shake things up a little and perhaps disturb morale within the team.

It's even more strange because Stuart Broad recently came out with some comments about England needing to learn to fill Flintoff's shoes when he wasn't there, because he isn't a lot of the time. You wouldn't have thought a 9 year old could be so wise, but it's true. He talked some sense, people. He said what every blogger has been thinking, though not the ECB.

And so Andrew Strauss isn't going to be playing in the domestic T20 Cup either. He's really gearing up for the Ashes. Confidence in the English team is probably soaring.

I like it.

The Woes of Bopara

Out for 49, so close to that half century.

Not again, he says as he storms off the ground. This is getting pretty fucking ridiculous. He's missed two in a row and suddenly Mitchell Johnson's words are getting to him. Slowly, very gradually, over the next few weeks he begins doubting himself, doubting his abilities. That century in the Test? Long gone. It's all ODIs and failing in the 40s for Bopara now. As the days go by, he finds himself descending into a state of failure-induced insanity. He is the crazy fellow who sits in a corner of the room, rocking silently and muttering the number 49 to himself repeatedly.

Of course, there's a flip side to it all but it's a pretty big flip side, just as this is a pretty long way for Bopara to supposedly fall. And I'm not going to mention it because it's a little scary.

Next match, he says. Next match he'll get that 50. It's only the Windies they're playing anyway.

And his captain has gone ahead and beat him. Bopara cries himself to sleep at the very thought.

Ahem. Colly & Broad Highlights

From the ODI against the Windies which they somehow won, bringing their total to 1 out of 1 which is an achievement in itself for the fellows:

It seems the poor ranga got a little too excited winning the match for England. Interestingly enough, I had a fascinating discussion with a very liberal-minded 50 year old lady today about rangas. She was actually talking about the treatment of Germans in the first World War, but for the sake of a comparison, she uttered the words "What if you said 'you're an orangutan!' to a redhead and drove them off the land?" a few too many times. For the record, if you are a redhead, I do love you, even if your soul is corrupted by Satan himself. I was once a voluntary ranga myself back in high school, bet you didn't know that.

However, this isn't a post about rangas, it's about Stuart Broad:

Oh yes.

What's that? You want me to take him seriously? To take Broad seriously?

Ha.

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?!"

Cultivating England's Hunger

It almost sounds disturbing, doesn't it? As if 'Eye of the Tiger' should be the soundtrack to this "cultivation" of England's hunger, accompanied by a montage of the Brit boys training for the biggest Test series of their lives.

What am I talking about? You will soon know. Andrew Strauss, having just won a ridiculous 2 Test series against the Windies 2-0, has this to say about his boys:

"If you look at the way the guys are practising at the moment, there's a real hunger to improve - and we need to cultivate that and make sure it grows and grows."

...and grows and grows and grows.

But the only truly creepy comment made was by Jimmy Anderson about England's 7 year old player. I am speaking of none other than Stuart Broad of course. Because not only does Jimmy acknowledge that Broad's biological age is actually 22 (I maintain it is in the single digits, however), but he also has a rather terrifying claim:

"[Broad] has a 30-year-old's head on his shoulders."

I hope I am not the only person who immediately visualised a bobblehead toy of Broad featuring an excessively large head as is the bobblehead way.

Of course he's hit puberty, idiots. That is in no way the face of a pre-pubescent boy.

The horrors of Chennai's bowling

Can mean that Kolkata win a match which CSK really should have won. I wasn't watching the game obviously, but WHAT THE FUCK WENT ON, I ask?

Now they have to win a match against Punjab when Yuvraj has been getting hat-tricks all over the place. Yeah, good luck with that. If you can't beat the coughing, spluttering shittiest guns of the competition, I'm just waiting for CSK to choke against Kings XI too.

Goddammit.

Someone went for 13 an over, the second highest of his side. Someone is in deep shit because he should know how to fucking bowl by now. I put all my faith behind this someone and back them more than any other player and they FAIL TO DELIVER.

I'm off. England won against the Windies. Big surprise there, not like we haven't been expecting it since day 3.

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.

The Curse of the Nightwatchman

Centuries ago, in a small village in the highlands of Guatemala, a witch woman uttered the words to a curse which would plague one Kevin Pietersen in centuries to come.

You send your nightwatchman in, you don't make your half-century.

It's not Jimmy's fault. Maybe if you'd actually batted instead of sending him in while you sipped tea and had a jolly good time in the dressing rooms, you wouldn't have gotten out on 49.

Anyway, England are 6/569 at tea. At this rate, they'll actually declare. It's been a while since they've convincingly done that. Stuart Broad is playing like this is a one-dayer.

And yes, the news is that England have declared. Well done to them.

Strangely Funny Ravi & Cook

This photo made me laugh:

From day one of the current Test. Ravi manages to look shorter than usual.

Rain rain go away?

It must be tough living in England. All that rain, all the time. Just raining non-stop, not even particularly heavy constantly, just... raining constantly.

So how must the English cricket team be feeling now? Rained in, I suppose. Oh ha ha, you say. Not a funny joke. I agree. But tell me, if the game has been delayed by an hour, will that cause a whole sequence of unnatural events to occur which end in the game being drawn and the West Indies counting their blessings?

That was just to scare prospective English fans. I just have a terrible habit of predicting the worst possible outcome early on in Tests.

But of course, a draw isn't the worst possible outcome of this match. The Windies could rally and bowl England out for... okay, I won't even go there. It's too horrifying for words, I imagine.

So I'm at a loss. Should I watch rain or do something productive with my time? I'm resigned to do the latter. You have no idea how much of the Budget I can cite off the top of my head, not to mention Turnbull's reply. The perils of work, my friends. It means you actually have to work, and no matter how much I love Kev, I think even I'm ready to rip Swanny's budget papers to bits. I narrowly escaped being locked in Parliament for a day, pouring over the Budget, but it still caught up to me in the end. It always does, this work.

Alright, I'm off, but I pledge to keep one eye on the cricket in Rainland.

By the way, Delhi over Punjab just because they can.

Just kidding, we love each other

What, you couldn't possibly have thought there was a bit of bad blood between Gayle and Strauss, could you? No, in fact, it's all just dandy between the two, and they've had a good laugh about the whole incident over a cup of tea at Windsor Castle. What's more, Straussy has gifted Chris his life savings and they're due to be married in a court in Canada sometime this year. That's how rosy things are between the two men. So very... rosy.

Says Strauss:

"I have a very good relationship with Gayle, I've had no problems with him. Everyone is entitled to his opinion and to be honest he may have been right about my Twenty20 form."

Translation: "We're very good friends and I do quite love his quirky ways. In fact, I'd go so far as to say everything he suggested about me being shit at T20 is not only relevant, but entirely correct. LOL."

Now, while I may see the benefit in mutually agreeing to lay off each other, I don't see why Andrew is running around insulting himself.

Gayle is keen to return the favour, but he passes on the opportunity to make a dig at his own abilities:

"I respect Strauss, we are all big men and the comments are part of the game. I have never had any conflict with him."

See, Strauss, that's how you do it. You claim to be best friends with the enemy, and then you go forth and talk about just how "big" you are. Instead of, you know, calling yourself a shit T20 player.

Meanwhile, Gayle's "misunderstanding" claim has become a whole lot more clear:

"I don't see myself playing test cricket for a long time. That's all I meant. We play a lot of cricket, there are injuries and sometimes you have to listen to your body."

Right, because the spirit of Shaun Tait has possessed his body. Last I checked, Gayle wasn't exactly drowning under injuries like the old man he claims to be. But I know what you're thinking? Is he happy to be here? Let's find out:

"Yes I am happy to be here. I want to try and rebuild West Indies cricket, we have lots of young players and hopefully I can share my experience with them."

So for anyone who said he was kicking his fellow countrymen with his comments, he's NOT, OKAY? He wants to share his experience with them. His experience of hating Test cricket.

As for Strauss, I'm not sure if Strauss is making a subtle dig at Gayle, but it does have undertones of bitchiness:

"Gayle is always a dangerous player and, hopefully, he will be slightly distracted but I will just concentrate on my job which is to make sure that all 11 England players are fully committed to the team."

I'm inclined to think he is having a go at Gayle, but only because that's more interesting. And as we know, they just love each other now.

Sunshines, lollipops and rainbows... complete with creepy droid kids.

Bops

That's a terrible name. I'll stick with Bopara.

I do quite like the guy. Three consecutive centuries, all stocky and pudgy-like, displaying the batting people want to see as opposed to, say, Cook's shots. Not that I mind how the mascara diva plays, because playing the necessary shots without any real beauty serves the same purpose as guiding the ball through cover or some such.

But yes, Bops is the man to go with. I'm sort of sitting here in disbelief that I'm calling him Bops, but am unable to do anything to the opposite.

Graham Gooch has been sending text messages to Ravi:

"Graham got a pair at the very start of his career and so did I. He just sent me a text saying congratulations so it makes me happy to see him happy."

Anything for his protégé.

While Cook's century was equally as hard earned, giving him the opportunity to build on his score tomorrow, I can't help noticing that England are actually playing decently. It's rather disconcerting. What kind of form is this, going into the Ashes?

Gayle vs. Strauss heats up

On the pitch now. Andrew Strauss is gone for 26 off Gayle.

Ouch.

Iris you bitch

She said Bell would be playing.

I guess she was wrong. And she took my goddamn money too.

I hate psychics, and am currently hunting desperately for my Magic 8 ball, which I lost somewhere in the vicinity of 12th Man's blog. If you see it, do return it. I'm losing all my bets on winners without it.

Stupid Iris. She denied me entertainment.

On the other hand, England now have a greater chance of winning this match without bells and bottoms adorning their ranks.