Babies everywhere are laughing at Australia as they get battered by India in the 2nd Test. It’s true. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

Just this very morning, as I was walking up my local high street, I passed a TV shop which was showing the cricket. India were giving Australia a fearful hammering and - I swear this is true - a young mum walked past with her baby in a push chair. The baby, seeing Ponting getting bowled by Ishant Sharma, started laughing hysterically and pointing it’s chubby little pink digits at the TV screen.

I’m sure I heard it gurgle “that’ll teach the arrogant bastards..hehehe” although I might have been mistaken.

Aussie cricket blogger Miss Field earlier gave England fans permission to laugh at her team. It seems that even small children are taking her up on the kind offer.

The ex-convicts need to bat out the entire day tomorrow to avoid a heavy defeat. I can’t see them doing that and, it would appear, nor can the toddlers of Great Britain. Huzzah!

Photo credit: Greyman

Tags: australia, cricket, india

Well he’d certainly like us to believe he is and, if you were to go along with some of the stuff that’s been written recently, it’s a view shared by journalists and pundits alike but just how good is he?

Now don’t get me wrong, our performances since he took over the reigns from Vaughany have been pretty impressive. We won the final Test match of the series and are 4-0 up in the ODI series with just the final match to be played tomorrow. Freddie Flintoff is back amongst the runs and Steve Harmison is back amongst the wickets. On the face of it he’s performed miracles since taking over. A win tomorrow lifts England up to second in the ODI world rankings but let’s just put things into perspective for a minute, shall we?

The win in the final Test was against a South African team who had already done what they set out to achieve which was secure a first Test series victory on English soil for over 40 years. Sure there’s the professional pride thing but I’m sure that as far as the Saffers were concerned they’d already done the job. To a certain extent that attitude has spilt over into the one day team. They weren’t helped by the injuries to key players but I can’t help feeling that their heart wasn’t in it. I’m not saying they’ve rolled over and kicked their legs in the air but I feel that if the Test series had gone the other way that we’d be seeing a different South Africa team.

Ian Bell gives us an interesting insight into Team KP in this quote from the BBC website:

Kev (Pietersen) sat down with us before the series started and gave us an honest chat about where he thought we were as a team…It’s pretty obvious to see that at times we can play outstandingly well and at times we can be pretty poor…The one thing he has tried to mark on everyone is that we have to have consistency and everyone has bought into that…

So the key ingredient to Pietersens success is by getting highly paid professional sportsman to stop being shit, then. Getting the players to agree that they need to perform consistently doesn’t strike me as being revolutionary and, if anything, says more about them than it does about him.

Maybe it’s just the curmudgeon in me. Possibly it’s because I wanted Fatboy Fat to take over but for whatever reason I’m still not totally sold on Pietersen as skipper.

Bring home the Ashes next summer and then I might reconsider.

Tags: andrew flintoff, cricket, england cricket, ian bell, kevin pietersen, south africa, steve harmison

The International Cricket Council has confirmed that next month’s Champions Trophy has been postponed until October 2009. With South Africa pulling out and pretty much every other team set to follow suit, it’s no surprise that the competition has been cancelled but the question that now remains is whether the competition has a place in the international cricket calendar.

I’ve yet to understand the need for another 50 over ODI trophy. We have the World Cup every four years. Isn’t that enough? What is the ICC Champions Trophy if not a watered down version of the World Cup? What is the difference apart from fewer teams are invited to take part?

Alec Stewart suggested on TMS the other day that the Champions Trophy should be held every four years rather than its current bi-annual status. He cited the football European Championship as being a competition that fills the four year void between World Cups but the key difference here is the teams taking part. The major teams taking part in the football World Cup and European Championships are different. This is not the case with the cricket World Cup and the ICC Champions Trophy.

As far as I can see, the ICC Champions Trophy is nothing other than another opportunity for the bigwigs in Dubai to milk yet more money out of cricket fans, TV companies and corporate sponsors.

Patrick Kidd over at Line and Length posted the other week about this ridiculous new Champions League Twenty20 that is being shoehorned into the 8 day gap between the ODI’s and Test series between England and India. As I said in the comments, how long will it be before the idiots at the ICC kill the goose that lay the golden egg?

I’m a bit of a traditionalist and prefer Test match cricket but, whether I like it or not, Twenty20 cricket has introduced a whole new audience to the game which can only be good for the long term. However, in typical fashion, the ICC have decided to try to fit in as many Twenty20 games into the calendar to secure more lucrative sponsorship deals.

According to the ICC Mission Statement, one of their key roles is to optimise ‘its commercial rights and properties for the benefit of its Members’. Gotcha. So these tournaments are not for the benefit of the fans of the game, then.

If the ICC had a genuine interest in the game, the players and the fans they would scrap the Champions Trophy, scrap the current bi-annual World Twenty20 tournament and run a Twenty20 World Cup every four years. I’d rather see a tournament that actually meant something to the players than watch the ICC Cash Cow Cup.

Tags: cricket, icc, icc champions trophy, money grabbing bastards

The Beijing Olympic Games has pretty much passed me by. It wasn’t until Saturday that I actually watched any of the action. It seems I picked a pretty good day because I saw Usain Bolt absolutely blitz the opposition in the 100 metres on his way to a new world record. Even for someone who has little or no interest in athletics, it was pretty impressive.

However my Olympic viewing experience took a turn for the worse when I then spent 10 minutes watching the dressage event. How anyone can call that an Olympic sport is beyond me. I’ve not seen so much mincing since I last took a stroll down Old Compton Street.

Anyway it seems that Great Britain has been doing rather well in this Olympic Games. We’ve managed to win 27 medals including 12 golds. By all accounts that’s the best Team GB have done for some time. What’s interesting for me, though, is the events that we’ve excelled at and, as a result, it’s prompted me to write to Seb Coe to suggest a new event for the London 2012 Games.

Olympic Sitting Down.

Have a look at the medals we’ve won so far:

Canoe/Kayak Slalom - 1 silver
Cycling - 6 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze
Equestrian - 2 bronze
Rowing - 2 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze
Sailing - 2 gold, 1 silver

All of these events involve sitting down. We’ve also won 2 golds and a bronze in swimming which is the extreme version of sitting down - lying down. In fact if it weren’t for a pesky bronze medal Team GB accidentally won in the gymnastics, every single medal we’ve won at this years Olympics would involve sitting down.

Forget all those events that involve running or jumping or throwing things a really long way. You know, the sports that all the other countries try to win. We should be spending the next 4 years coming up with Olympic events that involve sitting down if we want to be a dominant force in our own Games.

Tags: beijing, china, london 2012, olympic games

Everyone else has been chipping in with their take on the inclusion of Darren Pattinson for the last Test against South Africa. Here’s mine.

Just in case you don’t get the joke, visit Lolcats and then come back and lolz at teh funneh.

KTHXBAI