Now then now then, England have enjoyed their best day of Ashes cricket since September 2005. The ball moved, the ball bounced, and the Aussie batsmen kept missing it, chopping on and hitting it up in the air. After Alistair Cook was in the runs yesterday, James Anderson and Stuart Broad both performed well today, which is doing wonders for the number of hits on this site. Over the last couple of days The Village Cricketer has had its best days ever, with more than five times the amount of traffic than normal. And what are you all reading? Here are the top five most visited The Village Cricketer posts over the last week:
Yep, when one of Broad, Anderson or Cook make headlines for England, the post I did on their naked centrefold for Cosmopolitan magazine gets a huge amount of visitors. A shame indeed then that I don’t have any pictures of Andrew Strauss naked, Kevin Pietersen naked or Andrew Flintoff naked. Naked cricketers it seems, are very popular on the internet.
To give you an idea of how many hits TVC is getting, if the current rate continued we’d have a higher monthly circulation than the Cycling World, Total Fly Fisher, Golf Punk and Bowls International magazines.
Betfair, sponsors of this year’s Ashes, have employed Phil Tuffers and Jason Gillespie to compete in a series of special head-to-head challenges. They’ve already competed in a Pedalo race, and will also be racing Lawn mowers, horses and doing something called Zorbing. Full details are on the special Betfair fanvfan.com website, and you can watch the first challenge below:
The Village Cricketer is a big fan of gingers, not as much of a fan as TVC English All Star Wrencharoo, or The Wisden Cricketer journalist, TVC English All Star and ginger batting sensation Ed Craig, but still a big fan.
So, being a fan of ‘le ginge’, TVC was most excited to see Aussie sub (he’s a sub, but not a supersub like Gary Pratt or Bilal Shafayet) Andrew McDonald take the field yesterday. I’m not harsh enough to compare him (as Bob Willis did) to Ronald McDonald, however there is a compelling Andrew McDonald doppleganger we can reference in these hallowed e-pages.
Yes, ginger Aussie Andrew McDonald looks a bit like ginger actor Jason Flemyng, who played Tom in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Brad in Spiceworld: The Movie.
The ring finger on my left hand once looked like Nathan Hauritz’s finger, when the tip of it was smashed into 16 different fragments of bone by a cricket ball. I held the catch, and what was left of my finger, in my right hand. It got bent sideways, because one of the ligaments in that digit wasn’t attached properly anymore. It hurt a lot, but we won the game. Hauritz’s finger could possibly be dislocated, however if it is broken then Australia’s best bowler (sic) is out of the rest of the Ashes. Perhaps they might fly Bryce McGain in as cover?
So, Andrew Flintoff will retire from test cricket at the end of the Ashes. A shame, he is a terrific player. His qualities as a cricketer and the 2003 – 2005 purple patch, culminating in the famous Flintoff inspired Ashes win, have forged a legend that was enhanced by the reputation of being a fairly normal bloke, who liked a drink or 10, and was liable to doing daft things, like we all are.
Bowling fast is hard work, and especially hard on a big unit like Fred. You can see why he wants to go now, better go too soon and stay wanted, and the injury reasons are genuine. What is interesting, however, is that had he been 31 and at this stage in his career 10 – or even five – years ago, it is entirely possible he’d have continued fighting to get fit again, continued taking the cortisone injections, and continued putting has body through the mill, as test cricket provided the most lucrative career choice. Goughie might have done similar, but he was forced to continue on the county treadmill for a career.
Now, however, there is an alternative. He’ll continue to play limited overs cricket (probably at both county and country level), getting reasonably well paid for it, and really cash in on the IPL scene (not to mention the endorsements). Four overs a match, plus a bit of big hitting, in the shortest form of the game would be easier on his body and provide a far more substantive salary on his bank account than choosing to drop limited overs and play only the longest form. Plus he’ll get far more time at home with his family.
Big Fred has very valid reasons for his retirement, and I’ve no doubt injury is the main one. Through it, however, he has become the first big name to retire prematurely and choose to become an ODI and T20 specialist when he could have played another three or four more years Test cricket.
“To some people cricket is a circus show upon which they may or may not find it worthwhile to spend sixpence; to others a physical fine art full of plot, interest and enlivened by difficulties; to others, in some sort, it is a cult and a philosophy,” CB Fry.
The self-styled ‘sporting outfitters of intellectual distinction’ at Philosophy Football spend most of their time finding quotes from philosophers about football and slap them on a T-shirt. This summer, hoping it can capitalise on a 2005esque thirst for the great summer game or the strong Aussie dollar, it has launched a philosophy cricket range with opening bat CB Fry’s musings on cricket as a philosophy.
CB Fry captained both Sussex and England. A gifted footballer too, he played professionally for Southampton and Portsmouth, making his England debut in 1901. For a time he was also holder of the world record for the long jump. A superbly gifted cricket writer and academic off the pitch CB politically managed to combine standing unsuccessfully for Parliament as a Liberal Party candidate with the bizarre idea ideas that if Germany could be persuaded to play England at test cricket WW2 might be avoided.
The T-shirt is available from www.philosophyfootball.com with the search now on for other cricket quotes for T-shirted immortalisation.
So I was wrong, on the whole England were pretty poor again, yet we didn’t lose. The reason why – well there were four – Collingwood, Swann, Anderson and Panesar. Collingwood gave a masterful display of defensive batting, and the tail provided stiff resistance against an Aussie attack that, while keen, tired as the day drew on.
And then, when he went with still plenty of time to go, the last pair resisted for nearly an hour. Surprising that Ponting gave the last overs from one end to Marcus North rather than a quick, however you’ll not find me complaining.
From the moment Pietersen left a straight one from Hilfenhaus England were in deep trouble, and it was backs to the wall from then on in. It’s not quite how I’d like England to play (they should have competed better earlier in the match) but you do have to admire how England escaped. Once the batsmen (Collingwood aside) decided they didn’t quite fancy it, you can only admire the way the tail resisted, and when you consider just how poor Anderson was and Monty probably still is with the bat, it makes their heroics even more remarkable.
So, nil-nil as they go to Lords, and it will be interesting to see how both sides turn around. England should be one-down, and hopefully this result should provide the kick up the backside required to perform properly in the next test.
I finally got round to watching one of the Empire of Cricket documentaries on the BBC tonight, and I have to say, it wasn’t bad. It was the one about how the Aussie’s got good, and there was some interesting commentary and archive footage.
It included, for example, how Steve Waugh stood up to Curtly Ambrose and scored a double-ton to seal the Aussie’s first series win in the Caribbean in donkey’s years in 1995, although they neglected to mention that much of Ambrose’s fury was because Waugh had in the same match claimed a catch off Brian Lara that had obviously bounced.
Ahead of this summer’s keenly anticipated Ashes encounter between England and Australia, BBC Two explores cricket’s rich sporting and social history in a documentary series about the four countries whose very different cricketing cultures created the modern game as we know it.
From its origins in the public school playing fields and shires of rural England to its adoption in the twilight of Empire as the national sport of emerging nations such as Australia, the West Indies and India, cricket has always been shaped by factors beyond the boundary fence.
The series contains rare and revealing archive, much of it unseen before on British television, and contributions from leading cricket writers and a glittering line-up of top players, past and present, including Kevin Pietersen, David Gower, Shane Warne, Steve Waugh, Sir Vivian Richards, Michael Holding, Sachin Tendulkar and Kapil Dev.
I enjoyed what I saw today and will certainly be watching the full series on iPlayer.
