Posts from ‘July, 2009’

The news from Phillip Hughes on his personal Twitter account is that he will not be playing in the 3rd Test, presumably with Shane Watson taking his place.

All of the attention over the last 10 days has surrounded players either injured or badly out of form. Both sides are in a certain amount of disarray, but it promises to be the weather that holds the trump card at Edgbaston.

The ICC is not a world cricket governing body. It is a cosy front for the national boards. They can use it to appear to be doing the right thing by cricket whilst they sit about playing power games or congratulating each other on how much money they are raking in.

Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower will be pushing for a say in decisions about England’s contracted players appearing in the IPL. Much fuss is still being made over the injuries to KP and Flintoff in relation to their involvement in South Africa earlier this year. Freddie sustained a new injury during the IPL, whilst KP carried his achilles throughout the tournament.

Mark Ramprakash and Justin Langer are not going to be playing at Edgbaston, regardless of media hype. Here is a list of nine players who did manage to make a comeback during an Ashes series.

Australian spin bowling ain’t what it used to be, despite the best efforts of Nathan Hauritz during the Ashes. So, a Spin Summit has been held to thrash out a solution to the problem. Aside from encouraging the selection of attacking spin bowlers in age group and grade cricket, their main concern appears to have been ensuring that pure, unblemished young spinners aren’t led astray and corrupted by that evil of all cricketing evils, the Doosra.

David Wigley has apparantly had the defining say in the course of the Ashes series. A ridiculous story on the Telegraph website goes on to say that Wigley “reprised the Stephen Harmison role” by aiming the ball at various outfielders. Or that he got Phil Hughes out, I don’t recall.

Once KP was ruled out, we all knew what the squad was going to be. There was almost no point in announcing it.

Northamptonshire have enjoyed facing Mitchell Johnson as much as England did at Lord’s. In the 1st innings of their tour match against the Australians, they took 42 from Johnson’s 7 overs.

It’s hard to keep Dominic Cork down for long. And today he did for Sussex in the final of the FP Trophy with 4/41, including the first 3 wickets in his opening spell.