Bye bye Geraint.

Oh no - but I love him (though not as a keeper, he's a bit rubbish behind the stumps)

I'm sure you'll grow to like Chris Read

3rd Test - England 515 all out with Centuries for Pieterson and Bell

Pakistan 538 all out with bigger Centuries for Khan and Yousuf

Two days left. Can England get a win out of this? The way the batting and bowling's been going and the pitch is playing, I doubt it. It's got draw written all over it.

There was a 'what happened next' moment with Inziman falling over, breaking the stumps with his gloves & then hurdling the stumps headfirst to try not to get out. Fortunately the keeper, Reed, got out of the way or he'd have been crushed. The dismissal (as the gloves knocked the bailsoff Inzi was out) will be replayed for years to come as it's very amusing.

One more point for the English pace bowlers (& sorry for shouting)

PITCH THE BLOODY BALL UP

Pakistan need 323 to win on the final day.

Should be a 'knicker - gripper'

A brilliant win for England with just the start that Chris Read needed

"Montstrous" is cricinfo's suggestion for a headline. i was hoping to get home to watch the end, but i'm gladly watching the clatter of wickets instead, and i've got 8 more to see.

Nice one Straussy.

20/20 Finals day. Fucking ace, i've been watching this for 11 hours now.

i couldn't give a fucking flying monkeys wanky cum shot in the mouth who owns sky. this would not have been possible on terrestrial tv. as with football, sky have made cricket more accessible to the masses.

and good stuff too. obv any right minded person would have enjoyed the afternoon as leices shafted essex and darren "too good for england, but still fucking shite" gough, and boy did he chuck some pies. fucking fat yorkie cunt.

notts took the piss out of surrey, shame the SHIRE didn't in the previous round. finals day would certainly have benefitted from GLOUCS presence.

at least leices beat notts in the final, mainly due to JEREMY SNAPE who used to play for the SHIRE, still can't understand why we let him go.

the fianl was ace, notts chasing were ahead of the rate up until the 14th over, then leices turned the screw.

3 fucking great games of cricket, it's almost good enough to make you go and have a wank.

Yeah was great Mo wasnt it, I watched the last 10 overs and it was pouring down but great entertainment and so sporting that they stayed out there to finish it rather than the rain deciding it on d/l method

So...........Nott's lost the final and Read lost some teeth

I only saw the last 2 overs of the final. If I was a Notts fan I'd be complaining as the last ball was a full toss above waste height & so should have been called wide. The would mean Notts had an extra ball & 2 added to their total. I can understand the umpire (who I think was Peter Hartley) deciding that it was time go get off before someone caught pnemonia ... it did look very wet.

the shire are live on sky at the moment, and they're beginning to take control against derby. it's all good.

I went to the first day of Nott's V West Indies A yesterday at Trent Bridge.
A good days cricket made better by the fact that it was free
I may well go for the last day tomorrow.

Controversy at the Oval with Pakistan refusing to re - take the field after tea due to a 'Ball Tampering' allegation by Umpire Hair.

More Here

The Pakistan team have re - taken the field..............but Umpire Hair is now refusing to come out

As the umpitres took off the bails it looksas though Pakistan have forfieted the test ..... but it sounds as though everyone is in negotiations ... the cricket forums are going into melt down

Yup........England win, full story here

why didn't they come out and hold a protest? what a bunch of sore losers. if i was the cricket governing body i'd fine the bastards.

what exactly did they do the ball?

Tampering with the ball - which I appreciate can be seen as some kind of bizarre male euphemism - has been going on in cricket for as long as I can remember. And I watched Bob Woolmer's Kent side way back in the 70s, ironically.

Everyone does it. It is absolutely ridiculous that Pakistan have been singled out for this.

Good grief - it makes the BBC's headline news!

Well, today we have cricket as the Today programme's headline news - even before some Labour twat who isn't on holiday saying that GCSEs are going to be harder in future.

My own view is that Darrel Hair and Billy Doctorove are the umpires and without umpires you can't have a game. Whether you like it or not you have to be able to take whatever decisions they make. Of course there is redress available at the right time and under the right conditions but to refuse to come out and play is more serious than getting a decision wrong.

Bob Woolmer the Pakistani coach, is so laid back and calm it's almost startling.

Imran Khan was on Newsnight giving a good account of this issue. He was saying that when england startred to use and have sucess with reverse swing recently, everone was saying how good and clever they were.
He said when Pakistan started doing this years ago, english cricket didn't like it, and there were murmerings about cheating, or not playing the game properly.
I think he sugested something about a colonial mentality.

Sorry buy Imran Khan isn't just an ex cricketer he's now a Pakistani policitian and hais comments aren't aimed at the Biritsh but for people to see back in Pakistan. The second problem was that when Waquar & Wassim started reverse swinging the ball they were tampering with it. On the 1992 tour even Richie Bennaud saw the tampering

Red Star: on Imran Khan I agree with you completely. I was just flying a bit of a kite (as it were).
And on your second point about ball tampering in 1992, I am well prepared to belive what you say.
Sportsmen cheat in loads of sports, and if you get caught that's tough luck. To throw a strop and refuse to come out on to the field of play shows a bad attitude. Footballers get accused of cheating all the time. They do deny it a bit, then usually just keep their heads down for a week.

I assume that would be the same Imran Khan who admitted he used to get the twelfth man to bring him bottle openers and the like.

Hair we go again

I read the Independent today and couldn't believe the crassness of the man. I can't make my mind up about Darrell Hair. I totally agree with him about Muralitheran's action and I believe he made a decision in good faith in the last test. But that email is the sign of a troubled man. "Troubled" about what is another question. Being dubbed 'racist'? Making a decision that he finds difficult to stand by? Being skint?

As for Inzamam-ul-Haq . . . . . well the spotlight has rather conveniently moved away from him. I still think he was mostly at fault for what happened, along with Zaheer Abbas. They were the ones who decided to protest in such a crass and stupid manner.

The plot thickens......

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/5292236.stm

The clot thickens . . . . .

Now he's saying that he was encouraged by the Umpires Association to send the email. I'm losing interest now.

i don't give a fuck about daryll hair, i just want to know when the pakistan side propose to stop cheating.

it's not the first time they've been called for ball tampering, during the 90's they were consistantly disciplined for intimidatory appealing, and last winter for fucks sake they were scuffing up the pitch. generation after generation they are cheating cunts.

firstly , i think hair is(was ) a good umpire. made strong decision however unpopular ( murali , now this incident ) and stood by his convictions. i dont think he is a racist ( a bad comment made by pakistan after being caught out cheating )..But Hair did himself no favours with the email and request of a payout from the icc.
2. ball tampering...has been going on for years. we all know it happens. we all know that the pakistanis are masters of this. They were caught out..Was there an agenda ? It was reported in australia that the english coach approached darrell hair at the start of the day and suggested that the umpires keep their eye on the pakis and the ball....i honestly think hair and doctrove , who are out in the arena all day had noticed some damage to the ball otherwise they wouldnt have taken the action they did.
3.what about billy doctrove ..everyone has forgotten about him..por old darrell's copping all the blame..lol

4.Pakistan - especially inzaman..their behaviour is appalling . after being docked the 5 runs.their course of action should have been , wait until stumps and lodge a complaint with the match referee.
Not stage a protest /'sit in'. this is totally against the rules of cricket , not only the fabric of good sporting behaviour..the image of the keeper sitting on the balcony reading the paper. this was a protest , it was a spur of the moment thing..
as they were ahead in this test match , you would think that they would be keen to get on with the game and get a famous win.
i cant imagine an australian team( nor a english team ) doing hat the pakis did. an Australian captain who led a walk off, or staged a sit in and refused to take the field would never be selected again for an australian team.
The pakistanis can protest and yell and scream all they want, but their behaviour was very ordinary and not in the spirit of the game.
even if you dont like it , the decision of an umpire is final and correct

I'm not really following this any more, but: If the Pakistanis WERE ball tampering, and that they reacted like they have, they are disgraceful.
You get caught cheating and then turn on an umpire like that - the worst accussation you can make almost anywhere today is one of racism. The Pakistanis have made that accusation against Hair, and as Rad Star has said, this has been used in internal Pakistani politics.
Mike Atherton got done for cheating in 1994 - the dirt in the pocket affair. He got fined £2000 for this, even though he claimed the dirt was 'just' to dry his fingers. He took it on the chin: ( he didn't have much choice).

And the $500,000: I think it is perfectly fair that the umpire said to the ICC, (something like), ''If I am about to be unfairly hounded out of my proffession in this manner, then I'll go quietly for half a million.''

I think Duleep Allirajah makes some interesting points here; about colonialism and empire. I don't really know what to think about that, but for sure, in Pakistan, I bet that the view that the English (and Aussies) are racist Islamaphobes is the common view.

Regardless of the furore.........
I got home today to find an e - mail from a mate telling me he'd a spare ticket for the England V Pakistan game at Trent Bridge that I can have at cost price

(and I'm actually on a day off ! )

Yes, that's how it go's.
I've never been to a cricket match.
I really would like to, one day.
I suppose, coming from Croydon, I should be a Surrey supporter.

I have my ticket for the England V Pakistan one day match on the 8th.






I have also bought an umbrella.

We now have tickets for the last 3 ashes tests in Aus (Perth, Melbourne & Sydney) .... YPEEE

Ball-tampering -- heh, heh, heh (excuse me for that Beavis and Butthead moment)!! Why can't they do as in American baseball, in which where ball-doctoring (sounds like something done by vasectomy surgeon) used to occur, and change the ball in play frequently. Major League Baseball realised some time ago that a few extra hundred dollars spent per game on baseballs was worth the integrity of the game.

ah...........Litus, that again would be a problem as part of the game is that as a ball gets 'older' the natural damage from play changes the way that it behaves when bowled. Hence the 'new ball' is given to fast bowlers to try and beat the batsman by pace whereas when it's been 'knocked about a bit' the spinners come on to use the 'old ball' to swing or reverse swing. The controversy is over the bowling side trying to artificially 'age' the ball.


Clear as mud, I know

Thanks that was actually really helpful, I didn't realize that ball age and damage was an integral part of the game. Perhaps taking another page from baseball, you could lace the ball, providing pleanty of speed for the fast bowlers and "damage" to the roundness of the ball for spin bowlers. Or, maybe us who know nothing of the game should just keep or gobs shut and stop trying to "fix" a game that's been around for ever. You know how we Americans are about meddling in world affairs we have no business meddling in...

As you can see, the ball has stitching (known as the seam) The allegations which caused Pakistan to forfeit the Test match were that someone had artificially damaged this to make the ball behave in a way which would normally only happen after more prolonged use.

By the way, I think you probably have more understanding of cricket than I do of baseball

Perhaps its the cross stitching (rather than a single seam along the circumferance) on the baseball then that gives the baseball pitchers the ability to move it around and make it break so much. I'm sure the bounce also takes away alot of the movement.

Actually, my only exposure to cricket was a month I spent in India and my surprise at how the country shut down during matches (matches which by the way seemed to go on for ever). I was also surprised that all the children, my dad's brother's kids, played cricket instead of soccer. In any case, as cricket was the only sport around for that month, and becasue I am a complete sports addict, I picked up as much cricket as I could.

If you're interested, a good, very amusing book for explaining the basics is What is a Googly ? by Robert Eastaway.

Edited to link to the US Amazon page.

I'm off to Trent Bridge, the game starts in just over an hour and a half.

Hope you have a great time, regardless of the weather and the result!

Thanks Sarah, both the weather and the result suited me just fine

You've been witness to a rare event. England beating another test country in a 1 day game in 2006.
(Now that should confuse L-I-USA!!)

BTW the 'ball tampering' explanation wasn't quite right. There are 2 forms

The first is to 'lift the seam' so it becomes more prominent. When this happens the ball 'seams' when it hits the pitch i.e. deviates from the true more than it should after it hits the pitch and bounces. This form of ball tampering has been performed for many years. Last year one of the Pakistan team played for an English county & was 'warned' for lifting the seam.

The 2nd is much more complicated. A new ball moves or swings in the air under certain conditions.
To make the ball 'move' in the air once it gets 'old' one side is kept as smooth as possible whilst the other is allowed to be 'roughed up'. This allows the ball to 'move' in the air i.e. deviates in the air. Reverse swing was 'invented' by Pakistan andv hasnow been mastered by some, but not all English bowlers. The Aussies haven't mastered it ... yet

I think that the Pakistan team have been accused of 'roughing up' the ball so produces 'reverse swing'. As no one has admitted 'tampering' the captain is charged. Under the 'laws' the captain is responsible for keeping to the rules/spirit of the game. The result is that if a rule is broken but the culprit can't be found or the whole team breaksa rule the captain is guilty. So if it is considered that the Pakistan team did tamper with the ball Inzaman will be convicted, even though he probably wasn't the one that did the dead.

btw the 'smooth' side is stopped from getting rough by players rubbing it on their trousers. This is why many bowlers have a red streak on their trousers after awhile

Even more confusing is that one day games are played with white balls (due to players wearing coloured rather than white clothing). The White ball is reputed to seam much more than the red one, even though they are made in exactly the same way.

Help the cricket season in England has now finished and it's a long time till we start again in April 2007.

What do I do now ??