Andy Zaltzman's Blog, page 14

The world's luckiest players, and its favourite

Lady Luck has huge crushes on these two
© AFP

A new Test batting star emerged for England yesterday, to go with the new one-day batting star and new Twenty20 batting star, who also emerged over the last year. Eoin Morgan's highly attractive three-for-the-price-of-one offer has added to the growing competition for places in a Test side that should soon start to impact even on the seemingly undroppable. The calmness, timing and variety of run-scoring capabilities that Morgan displayed in...

The Jimi Hendrix of offspin

Muttiah Muralitharan is fifth all-time on the list of Sri Lankan Test match six hitters
© Getty Images

Muttiah Muralitharan's incredible Test career is almost at an end, and, as I write, he is in the process of attempting to become the first and last man to take 800 Test wickets. Given the nature of modern international cricket, I think I can predict that no-one else will reach 800 with a similar level of confidence as someone announcing that John Wilkes Booth will always retain the wor...

A brushing of elbows, and debutants on the trot

Ricky Ponting and Mohammad Aamer attempt to break into a Scottish dance routine
©AFP

After a painstaking 98-year reassessment study following the botched triangular series experiment of 1912, neutral Test match cricket returned to England yesterday. It was, according to those who were lucky enough to see both Syd Gregory's Australia play South Africa almost a century ago, and their modern-day baggy-green descendants take on Pakistan, much improved on its previous incarnation. It was a ...

England's World Cup chances, and a cathartic confession

Shaun Tait: that's Mr Grumpy to you
© Getty Images

England have chosen a very good time to register a convincing win over Australia. It has dovetailed extremely neatly with the hydraulically hyped football team exploring hitherto uncharted territories of incompetence in a World Cup humiliation that is being widely viewed as the nation's biggest embarrassment since King Harold was tricked by the Normans into a game of Catch The Arrow With Your Eye. (In relative terms, watching England...

Wonderful pointlessness, and the dullest Twenty20 team of all time

Two separate Chris Tavare references in this blog, you lucky, lucky things
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England and Australia renew a rivalry older than time itself today in a bizarrely scheduled and/or financially advantageous series of one-day internationals, perhaps the least eagerly anticipated England-Australia showdown since the Sydney and London offices of accountancy firm Scraghound, Flude & Prink met for an Ashes year-end ledger-off in 1984. Nevertheless, with the national football team co...

Well done, Dwayne

Benn, Gayle and Co realise how funny their achievement is
© AFP

In the first Test in Trinidad, which followed to 100% accuracy an unofficial ICC computer-generated ball-by-ball prediction of what would happen, Chris Gayle's West Indies came within one Dwayne Bravo delivery of history. Until Bravo dismissed Boucher to conclude South Africa's first innings – a grave tactical error, as it transpired, which served only to unleash Steyn and Morkel onto a poor, defenceless batting ...

England's Ashes chances, and a salute to Basil Butcher

Basil Butcher: cleverly ensured there aren't any pictures of him bowling
© The Cricketer International



 

Over the last few days, the roads of England have been inundated with joyous cars sporting flags of St George, the red cross fluttering proudly in the English air in honour of its sporting heroes, as the nation, coming together as one, celebrates its cricketers' 2-0 series victory over Bangladesh.The football-obsessed media would have us believe these fla...

Ten wickets with a stick of French bread

Mudassar Nazar: master of the fearsome blitztrundle
© Getty Images



 

England has reaffirmed its status as the greatest nation in the history of the world with its third consecutive intermittently-unconvincing-but-ultimately-comfortable victory over Bangladesh. It was a good, competitive Test match. Whilst Bangladesh were batting. When they were bowling, it was another pointless exercise in zero-intensity average-inflating net practice for England's batsmen, ...

Tendulkar v Anand, cricketer v bear, and a plot to kidnap Gary Kirsten

Bear facts: New South Wales' finest pose with a somewhat hirsute training partner
© New South Wales Cricket Association



 

Hello, Confectionery Stallers. As you read this, I am attempting to convert Southern Italy to cricket and/or discussing with my wife and children over a few plates of pasta the likely outcome of the forthcoming epoch-defining two-Test series between England and Bangladesh that will bring the planet to a standstill from Thursday. (That ...

The secret to winning the World Twenty20

I shall calculate the length of the shadow cast by my hand and divide it by the number croissants I had for breakfast, and voila, we have a target
© Getty Images



 

What days we have been living through. A coalition government is in putative charge for the first time since Geoff Arnold used to open the bowling for the country – can you imagine a cricketer with Arnold's admirably defiant lack of personal-grooming products being allowed near the England dressing...