Wisden Cricketers Of The Year
Sorry for the lack of action here this week, but I’ve been playing and watching sports other than cricket this week - namely golf and football. There is an eerie quiet in England regarding cricket at the moment, its still a bit cold to get excited about playing or watching, so the pre-season games that are on are getting very little coverage. We do have the ever present merry-go-round of the Indian leagues and who will/won’t be playing over here but its all getting very dull.
Wisden did announce the other day though their five cricketers of the last year, an annual thing which precedes the publication of the new Wisden. I found it rather odd that players can only be given this honour once in their career - if they’ve had a good season surely it shouldn’t matter how many times they’ve been given the honour? The overall cricketer of the year was Jaques Kallis, and although he isn’t the most exciting cricketer to watch, he has an immense amount of talent with the bat and the ball (and a pretty hot wife as well!) and has scored x runs to deserve the accolade.
Sidebottom and Bell are two England players named as one of the best five of the year, and they have both had decent years. Sidebottom went from being a “who?” when brought back into the England side, and is now arguably the lynchpin of the bowling attack (I’ll start eating my hat once i’ve finished writing this). Bell has had a decent time and if only England would stop shifting him around the order he could be the key to England’s batting over the next 18 months (Ashes series included). Otis Gibson also got a mention for his stunning county season, and Durham have already admitted he’ll be a big loss for them in the upcoming season. Chanderpaul was the final player given the honour, which isn’t surprising as he has racked up the runs over the past year (also winning a damn close game for the WIndies yesterday against Sri Lanka). The final player was Zaheer Khan, which to be honest doesn’t really register with me. He was decent over here last year, but I’d have thought there were better players than him over the whole year.
Anyway, its nearly time for the proper season to start, so hopefully there’ll be some interesting things to talk about soon!
Telegraph Fantasy Cricket Update - I’m In!
I mentioned about telegraph fantasy cricket the other day and how I wasn’t sure if I would enter or not.. well I’ve caved in after a mate of mine set up a super league and I have to show him my superior knowledge! I’m already hammering him in Fantasy Premier League (football), so why not carry that over to cricket!
I’ve downloaded the player list from here, and this evening I will take a look at the lists and get my winning team together! Without giving too much away, I’m going to go for the approach with players that should be here for all the summer (none of these 3 week overseas players), and play in all forms of the game. This will allow me to effectively forget about my team once it has been setup and not worry about who’s playing for their country, in the IPL/ICL etc. So although I won’t be challenging those at the top of the leaderboard I should do ok. And if you’re really lucky I’ll give you some updates here!
Right, I’m off to choose my winning team… any tips gratefully received in the comments!!
Whilst we wait for the new England Cricket Adidas Kit
I was in a bit of a rush when I posted the other day about being able to pre-order the new England Adidas cricket kit. I didn’t get the chance to pick up on the fact that there are three variants of the kit - Test, ODI and Twenty20. The last variant is a new one for England to have at the beginning of an English summer, although we did have one at the World Cup in SA last year - previously in Twenty2- games we’ve just worn our ODI kit. I just hope that despite being by Adidas it won’t be the same as the Australian one without any sleeves! There isn’t much that can be done with the Test kit looks wise, but it will be interesting to see what design they come up with for the ODI kit.
Enough talk about kit for now, for there is a new online cricket game to play! To help with building up the launch of the new England kit, kitbag have released a little online game in the mould of stick cricket to play. My best after a couple of goes is a pretty decent 113 runs! Click Here to play and let me know your best score in the comments!
Pre-order the new England Adidas Kit!
As you may notice when visiting the blog, I’ve started the countdown to the new England Adidas kit being revealed and released with a few images and the like! Remember that this is the best place to come for all the info in the lead up to the big day!
In fact, “the big day” is two days - the reveal date that we first see the kit, and then a week later it will be available to buy. If you want to get in there early though, you can pre-order your kit straight from kitbag right now to ensure you are one of the first to receive the latest kit when it is available for sale.
When is it revealed? 18th April
When is it released? 23rd April
There you go, the two most important days in April right there! Keep checking back for more info as I get it!
Update - I have revealed what the kit looks like here, take a look!
