Hello. Remember me? I’m the bloke who used to write a cricket blog and occasionally do silly pictures in Photoshop. It’s been a while, eh? Sorry about that…

I took some time out to have a holiday in America last month which explains part of the reason I’ve not updated the site for a while but, to be honest, there was a period where I wondered if I’d ever update the site again.

You see I got some nasty comments and emails from some folk about the Shoaib Akhtar picture I did. These people also saw the Monty Panesar pic, put two and two together and decided I was a racist. I deleted the comments from the blog because I didn’t really think they were the kind of thing people would want to read but this only made the situation worse as my inbox filled up with hate mail.

I am not racist. Some of my best friends have done a poo.

Anyway that, along with my lack of Sky coverage (the IRA* won’t let me have a satellite dish on my flat), Englands abysmal ODI series and, of course, the terrorist outrage in Mumbai left me feeling decidely unbloggy. And before you ask, that’s a real word.

However, after several weeks of staring at a blank WordPress screen, I’m back. Be gentle with me.

* IRA - Ickenham Residents Association

Tags: cricket blog, flintoffs ashes, poo

Somehow I managed to miss the fact that the Flintoffs Ashes blog was 2 years old the other day. Yep, it was two years ago on 13th September that I relaunched the site as a cricket blog and I single handedly forgot to celebrate.

What a twat.

So, rather belatedly, I thought I’d wish myself a Happy Birthday and look back on some of the stuff I’ve posted over the last two years.

The most popular post since the relaunch has been the Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath Little Britain post. It still gets hundreds of views a month despite being nearly two years old. It consists of 56 words and one picture. Maybe that’s the key to successful cricket blogging. Fewer words, more pictures taking the piss out of Australian cricketers. There’s a lesson to be learnt there, kids.

Taking the piss out of Australians also features in the second most popular post - Barmy Army v Fanatics and the next few in the list are all the match reports from the 2005 Ashes series so there’s a definite trend occurring here. Let’s hope England can batter the Aussies in the 2008 Ashes series and I can be top of the pile once more. Mwhahaha!

Other stuff that folks seem to have enjoyed include the one where I question cricket players sexuality, that one about sitting down, the one about the one legged bunny boiler and the pic of Forrest Clark.

Have a delve through the archives and let me know what your favourite posts have been over the last couple of years.

One of the things that disturbed me looking back through two years worth of stats is the sheer volume of people who come to Flintoffs Ashes - a cricket blog, let’s not forget - looking for pictures of Dawn French. Naked. It’s all thanks to this one blog post. I hope they go away..ahem..satisfied.

Some of the other funny stuff that people search for include

• we are the army the barmy army we are mental
• you smell of wee
• collingwood strippers
• flintoff twat
• andrew flintoff naked
• feeling sleepy after lunch
• naked arses
• tits to go
• fat gay
• andrew flintoff’s trousers

Sometimes I get scared when I see what people have searched for.

Big thanks to the following websites that have linked to me in the past and sent me bucket loads of free traffic. TMS Blog. The Corridor. My two cents. Cricket-Blog. AYALAC. STUmpCam. After Grog Blog.

Finally big thanks to you for reading the site. I know I don’t update it as often as I should and I know I start lots of ‘regular series’ which never quite get finished but isn’t that the fun of it all? Eh? Anyway thanks for stopping by and leaving comments. Hope you enjoy the occasional ramblings of an out of work actor who loves cricket and couldn’t back the winner in a one horse race.

Tags: cricket, flintoffs ashes, glenn mcgrath, little britain, shane warne

As part of the redesign of Flintoffs Ashes I’ve just spent some time updating the site blogroll. There were some sites on there which hadn’t been updated for ages so I removed them.

Imagine that. A cricket blog. That rarely gets updated? Who would do such a thing? Tsssk tsssk…

Anyways, I got rid of all the dead wood and replaced them with some most excellent blogs:

The Wisden Cricketer Blog

Cricket With Balls

Cricket = Action = Art

Last of the Summer Whine

Miss Field’s Cricket Blog - sorry it took me so long, Missy

Republique Cricket

If you run a cricket blog that you’d like to be considered for a spot on the blogroll drop me a line. There are no guarantees - it all depends on whether I like the cut of your jib. Rather than just create a long list of cricket blogs, I’d rather add blogs that I think the readers of Flintoffs Ashes would like. Both of them.

Tags: cricket, cricket blog

As you can see, Flintoffs Ashes has undergone something of a dramatic refurb over the last couple of days. I’d figured it was time for a bit of a freshen up and after breaking the database thought now was as good a time as any to do it. After all, how else were we supposed to celebrate Lord Freds glorious 9 runs against the Saffers today?

If you’re reading this via RSS, you need to get your butt over here and have a look around otherwise you’ll miss out on features such as the spiffing new front page, the cricket videos, the clever captions and..ermm..well everything else.

Talking of RSS, we’re trying to make life easier for you to subscribe to Flintoffs Ashes. You need never miss a single post (i.e. our monthly output) by getting it delivered straight to your inbox. That’s right! Just fill in your email address in that handy little form at the top and - bosh - latest posts hand delivered to your inbox and, let’s face it, who doesn’t hand a personal hand job?

Not only that but you can get all the latest comments and posts through your feed reader with our spanking new FeedBurner account (which replaces the old, slightly naused up FeedBurner account). So if you’re using the old feed, drop it in the bin daddio and come on over to the bright side of the street by clicking on one of those little orange buttons.

So what else have we done? Well there’s obviously the new featured video section in the sidebar which currently features Freddies famous bit of sledging from the West Indies Test at Lords’ and there’s going to be a new feature launched in the next few weeks called Twatter. We’re just ironing out some of the bugs at the moment.

There’s bound to be some teething problems as the new system beds in so if you see anything amiss, please feel sure to drop us a line and we’ll try to fix it. For example some of the older cricket videos might not work anymore but we’re too lazy to look we haven’t had a chance to check all of the old posts.

On top of all that I’m also looking at opening Flintoffs Ashes up to guest writers. Do you have something to say about the state of English cricket, world cricket or the price of a pint of Kronenbourg in the Coach and Horses? Whatever you’ve got to say, we’d like to hear it. If you fancy being a contributor to the site, drop us a line.

Tags: cricket, cricket blog, flintoffs ashes

You might just have noticed that I haven’t really been posting anything on the site for the last few months. Don’t worry, I haven’t been affected by any kind of mystery virus that meant my hands fell off or anything. It was just that…well…how can I put it?

I fell out of love with cricket

I don’t know at what point it happened but I’m guessing, as I suggested at the time, it was during the farcical World Cup. Whereas for the previous 30+ years of my life I could sit and watch cricket for hours, I found myself bored of watching the Australians dominate everything and England being pants. Even watching the potentially brilliant Pakistan or the sublime batting line up of the Indians failed to get me going.

Maybe it’s a sign of the modern game but I found most Test matches to be entirely predictable and I started to find the constant cheating gamesmanship of the sides rather distasteful. That and the fact that Bob Willis really gets on my tits.

Nothing much has changed in the last couple of weeks - England are still pants and Australia keep winning - but for some reason I’m back in love with cricket again. Maybe it’s all the monkey business going on in Australia at the moment. Maybe it’s because the new English season is now only a few short months away. Maybe it’s because Lord Freddie is due to make his comeback any time soon.

Whatever the reason let us rejoice and say yea verily at the top of our lungs. Go on. I dare you. Stand up in the middle of your office and shout “Yea Verily”. Bonus points awarded for anyone who videos it and slaps it on YouTube.

Power up the Photoshop, Scotty. There’s a cricketer out there somewhere who needs to be humiliated.