The Faisalabad Befuddler, and a collective tribute to Chris Martin

Marlon Samuels: pays money earned from the IPL and from moonlighting as a magician to play Test cricket
© AFP



Happy New Year to all Confectionery Stall readers. Here, in the brave new world of 2013, which has already seen New Zealand make a glorious contribution to the history of low scoring, is part two of the unremittingly and certifiably prestigious Confectionery Stall 2012 World Cricket Awards.

Confectionery Stall Planet Earth Cricketer of the Year: Marlon Samuels
Other cricketers could claim to have had more statistically impressive years than Samuels. Not many, but some. None of them, however, could also claim to have spent the preceding decade and a bit underachieving spectacularly. In 2011, Samuels had given flickering hints that he might belatedly fulfill his talents. In 2012 he batted like a timeless master in Tests, and a rampant annihilator in catapulting West Indies to the World Twenty20 title. His back-foot off-side play in the Tests in England is set to earn him a Nobel Prize For Classical Batsmanship, his innings in the World Twenty20 final – or, specifically, the 52-off-18 blitz phase of it that turned the final on its confused head ‒ could have knocked down a well-constructed medieval castle.

Confectionery Stall Cricketing Economic Revolutionary of the Year: Marlon Samuels
Samuels left the IPL in mid-season to join the West Indian tour party in England, thus effectively paying a vast wodge of his own money for the privilege of playing in the Test series. He promptly batted better than he had ever done before – possibly heralding a new age in cricketing economics, in which selectors will charge their players thousands of pounds to represent their country, hyper-incentivising them to justify their own personal financial outlay. If the BCCI has the courage to present Gautam Gambhir with an invoice for $3.5 million for playing in the forthcoming series against Australia, he will score three double-hundreds. At the very least. That is a fact.