Jason Gillespie (RSS)

Matthew Hoggard (RSS)

This is massive news. Lee looked in terrifying form during the warm-up:

Australia’s first Test preparations have been thrown into chaos with Brett Lee complaining of pain down his left side. Lee was absent from Australia’s training session on Monday while undergoing scans at a nearby Cardiff hospital.

A team spokesman said the extent of Lee’s injury would be known by Monday night or Tuesday morning. But with just two days remaining before the first Ashes Test, the fast bowler must be in extreme doubt to take his place in the starting XI.

If he doesn’t play, will Hauritz take his place? I and the rest of Britain sincerely hope so.

Mr Miller that’s in charge of selectioning come in the dressing room and he looks at the special captain’s seat and he says: “starts out looking very nice but goes to pieces pretty quickly” and he made a little note in his notebook so I don’t know if that’s good or bad really but all I can do is keep focused and keep scoring runs for my county and keep working hard on my spelling.

I was also in charge of choosing all the food that we would have for tea so I got alphabetti spaghetti AND chicken nuggets but I couldn’t decide if we should have ice-cream for pudding or Angel Delight and I guess that’s what they talk about when they say that part of leadership is making the hard choices. At the end of the day, ice-cream’s record speaks for itself so I’ve gone with that.

Tossing the coin was pretty cool as well. I walked out there with Ricky Ponting and we were having a bit of banter, like two prize fighters sizing each other up you might say. I says: “Heads or tails, Ricky?” and he says “Did you get that coin out of your piggy bank you little pommie squit?” but Ian Bell is a much more composeder cricketer than the one that admittedly had a tough baptism of fire against Australia in the early days of his international career and I looked him right in the eye, well not exactly, but I looked at the ground where he was standing, and I says: “Actually I don’t have a piggy bank anymore” and he knew he was in a streetfight right away.

Alan Tyers rifled through Ian Bell’s gmail account

Click here if you can’t see it above.

He’s slightly lining his underwear about it, but I’m sure it’ll be sharp, different and entertaining - so lend your ears tomorrow morning, or download the podcast shortly afterwards.

Update: Here’s the MP3:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/fivelive/altashes/altashes_20090704-1313a.mp3

Courtesy of The Guardian.

And here’s Bob’s version. Get this man his own show immediately.

Taylor’s all-round class powers England win - Read the rest of the piece at Cricinfo.

Before I crack on with my eulogy to Michael Vaughan, there is one thing I’ve got to get off my chest: he ain’t a Yorkshire lad, he’s from fricking Lancashire!

Brilliant.

Taylor hundred powers England - Read the rest of the piece at Cricinfo.

He may not be playing for Australia any longer, but the shadow Shane Warne casts still looms large – as, indeed, does his face.

A six-foot high poster of Warne appeared on a bricked-up window of Advanced Hair Studios, the company to whom Warne is their now-hirsute ambassador. With depressing predictability, Camden Council have told them to take it down, but they hadn’t banked on the chairman of the company being an Australian, and a feverish cricket fan to boot.

So Carl Howell has set the council a charitable challenge. “I’m prepared to offer the council a wager,” he said. “If England win, we will take it down and pay £5,000 to the Camden Mayor’s Charity Trust Fund. If we [Australia] win, we can keep the poster up. The history between the Aussies and England is based upon having a good laugh together at the end of the series regardless of who wins.”

Councils are not, however, renowned for their sense of cheer and jollity, and it remains to be seen whether the poster will be pulled by the fun police.

Warne, never one to let a jibe pass, said: “Camden Council should be relieved I’m not playing”.

Police Officer Jeff Thomson from the NYPD first got in contact with us a couple of weeks ago, and since then his force have staged a family day to launch their season.

But it is cricket’s global appeal that can forge ties locally. With the game so popular in south asia and the Caribbean, those two communities in New York who sometimes struggle to integrate are given a vehicle to do just that.

“The Muslim community is not a community we had great outreach to in the past,” said Deputy Inspector Amin Kosseim, who runs special projects for the department’s Community Affairs Bureau.
And so the police decided to experiment with cricket, a game with a huge following across the Caribbean and South Asia. The response has cut across community lines. Tuesday’s opening match pitted the SuperStars — made up largely of players from Guyana — against the KnightRiders, a predominantly Pakistani team.

How about watching the 2009 Ashes series (well, parts of it) live on TV at a bar, or other public place, in NYC? Daily coverage begins at 6 am, our time - know of anyplace that’s making a special effort?

Hurry - she hasn’t much time to plan her days off before the series of all series gets underway…

The ladies deserve publicity, at last. The women’s game has implored media and public alike to come and watch them, but really, only in the last six months have they warranted it. Only since England stretched their lead ahead of the pack. When I went to Lord’s in 2006 I was impressed by Claire Taylor - who isn’t? - but the overall impression was underwhelming. Not so now. They field like tigers, bowl quickly and with supreme skill, and this England team are highly gifted and mostly still very young. England’s wicketkeeper, Sarah Taylor, is 20-years-old and pulled off an oustanding snaffle to her right, along with a stumping and 68 authoritative runs. Holly Colvin is a year younger, yet a veteran it seems. It’s all damn encouraging and exciting, and how often have we had cause to say that about women’s cricket? Not often.

Then Murray iced the cake with the gutsiest of performances, though was doorstepped by the BBC before he’d even flung his bags over his shoulder. Inevitably, he showed all the enthusiasm and charisma of an envelope, but we won’t hold that against him.

Unless he loses, of course.

Brunt and Taylor lead clinical England win - Read the rest of the piece at Cricinfo.

Farewell, Michael. I hope he is put to good use, either by England or by other sporting bodies in his retirement.

Their album is available to pre-order. Publicists, agents, similar people - whack me over a copy and we’ll advertise the pants off it.

These are worrying times for the Australians. A flat final day performance on a flat Hove pitch has given Ricky Ponting few signposts as to the composition of his best bowling attack 11 days out from the first Test in Cardiff. Only seven Sussex wickets fell on Saturday - a concerning development for a team containing five specialist bowlers - as Carl Hopkinson, making his maiden first-team appearance this season, raised a stirring century that ensured a draw, and almost forced a famous victory.

The only comforting thought for Ponting ahead of the practice match against Ian Bell’s England Lions on Wednesday is the availability of Mitchell Johnson, the ace in Australia’s pack. Peter Siddle will almost certainly partner him in Cardiff - Tim Nielsen, the Australian coach, described him as a “lock” selection on Saturday - but the make-up of the attack thereafter remains unclear and, in the absence of strong performances in Worcester, could be determined by conditions on the day.

The lack of a frontline spinner has upset their balance something horrible. Intriguing, wonderful, fascinating week coming up.

I can’t help find it funny. Sure, Australia may blitz us with their four-pronger at Cardiff, but the fact remains they have a hopeless spin attack for the first time in years and years. Most of my life was spent worrying about Warne and his flipper and what it did to our hapless batsmen, so spare me this brief foray into chuckling at his rather less scary replacement.

I’m sure he fields and bats better than Monty, though.

In other news, Alastair Cook cracked a 100 from 57 balls - yes, Alastair Cook of all people - while Flintoff’s found form with 93 from about four balls. I watched a bit of Wimbledon when I got home this evening, and in it Leyton Hewitt was (inevitably) asked about the Ashes. This damned, brilliant series just gets under everyone’s skins. It’s omnipresent - I almost prefer the build-up and the anticipation to the matches themselves. Much in the same way that Christmas Eve was always better than the 25th…

Nitschke and Rolton star in Australia win - Read the rest of the piece at Cricinfo.

The post-speech question-and-answer session was excellent, featuring Gilchrist, Graeme Swann and Dave Richardson, the former South Africa wicketkeeper now working for the ICC, and a good man he is too. Shared a couple of beers with him in South Africa and he’s a very serious student of the game, with its core values at the heart of everything he does. When asked this evening his predictions for the Ashes, he quipped: “It’ll be 2-1 going into The Oval, with England in front, and the chairman of the ECB, Giles Clarke, will prepare a featherbed for the final Test” which was a bit of a surprise, and not one Clarke will too overly pleased with I bet.

I put up the transcript of the speech at Cricinfo, so do give it a close read, and MCC will have an MP3 of the recording later.

Next Monday 29th June, Barnes CC in London will host the ultimate pre-Ashes
encounter: The Village Cricketer’s English All Stars v the Cricket with Balls
Aussie Code of Conduct XI.

Starting at 3.30pm, its a 30:30 match to raise funds and awareness for the
Everyman Male Cancer Campaign, part of the Institute of Cancer Research.

More information is available on the game here:
http://thevillagecricketer.com/2008/11/30/international-blogging-pride-at-stake-in-charity-extravaganza/

And donations can be made here:
http://www.justgiving.com/thevillagecricketervcricketwithballs/

Also, please be aware that Jrod, the big cheese of Cricket with Balls, is still
looking for Aussies (or pretend Aussies) to make up his side. Anyone fancying a
game should email cwb@cricketwithballs.com

We’d be really grateful for a plug for the match if possible.

Ian Bell, meanwhile, has been told to grow up with his elevation to captaincy of the England Lions - a good decision. It’ll be absolutely fascinating to see how he reacts to it, how he manages the likes of Harmison (selected for the Lions, but not for the main pre-Ashes squad).

Your thoughts?

Spotify users, create and share a playlist with songs you think might rally the troops this summer. Non-spotties, offer yours below. Suggestions should ideally be English, without wishing to sound like that turbo-powered racist arsehole, Nick Griffin.

I think Elgar needs to be included at least once, possibly as a replacement to the drone of the UK’s national anthem. If we’re talking about the national anthem, and it appears I am, I’m all for Billy Connolly’s suggestion - a comedian and character I would happily forsake two limbs to pick his brains - that it should be replaced by the theme tune to the Archers. And that’s saying something, considering I’ve often veered off the road in sheer depression when inadvertently listening to a programme containing a character called Shula. Cracking theme tune though.

So, Elgar, the Kinks, something from the Rolling Stones, or the Stone Roses and…?

George Dobell spoke to the man after a devastating performance against Warwickshire, against whom he took 5 for 39. And smashed several players on the head, arm and other limbs:

Nor was the damage just on the scorecard. Harmison also landed three crashing blows on the head, hand and arm of Tony Frost, Ian Bell and Chris Woakes respectively. It was, one lot of five wides apart, a top-quality spell of fast bowling that will not so much nudge the England selectors as grab them by the shoulders and shake them.

“It’s the worst thing in the world when you hit somebody,” Harmison said afterwards. “I really don’t like it at all. I **** myself when I hit Tony Frost. I was upset by that. And the same when I hurt Ian Bell.

“But on flat, slow wickets, you have to do something different and my variation is being aggressive and bowling bouncers.

“There’s not been a result here in 20 championship games and you can see why. There’s not much pace in the pitch, but it does have good carry. You have to have something different if you’re going to win here. If we can make them follow-on we can put some nervous twitches inside the Warwickshire dressing room.

“I showed my experience today. In the last two weeks I haven’t had to exert myself because of the wickets we’ve been playing on. I’ve had rewards in all three games, but this one is the most pleasing because it is a flat wicket. I had to exert myself a lot more today.

“And I came up against good players. Belly is a really good player. For him not to be in the Test team is something I struggle to comprehend. And the way Frost carried on after being hit on the head was credit to him.”

One thing is for certain: the selection for the England Lions match will be crucial and fascinating.

When we came into this tournament, a lot of people were saying we lacked the basic interviewing skills to answer a few simple questions without becoming bogged down and making the same old errors of saying: “Er, well, obviously we’ve got to be disappointed with that, er, Nas, er, I mean Wardy.” And it’s true that, in the past, some of our lads have frozen under the lights in these short-format interviews. But I think we can all be very proud of the way we’ve dealt with some often highly-skilled questioners over the last couple of weeks.

Every one of those lads in that dressing room has done a great job, but I’d like to single out Jimmy Anderson. A few years ago, Jimmy would have just stared back at the interviewer with his mouth open, looking like he might cry. But these days, he listens to the question, nods a bit and then he’s straight into the right areas by saying: “Look, I just try to get it into the right areas.”

More chuckles from Alan “Alany” Tyers.

Or listen to it below for free (at Youtube), you tight bastards.

They are, in descending order:

• DY Patil Stadium, Mumbai, India
• MCG, Melbourne, Australia
• Kensington Oval, Barbados
• Newlands, Cape Town, South Africa
• Gadaffi Stadium, Lahore, Pakistan
• Winner: Lord’s, London, England

1. Lord’s, London, England

As well as Victorian architect Thomas Verity’s Pavilion, which still stands, completed in 1890, the architects who have made additions to ‘The Home of Cricket’ is a who’s who of the significant hi-tech architects of the late twentieth century. Most famous is the Lord’s Media Centre, which won Jan Kaplicky and Amanda Levete’s Future Systems the Stirling Prize in 1999.

The bulbous form is supported above the ground by two lift shafts and its glazed facade give journalists and commentators an uninterrupted view of the ground. The curved structure was fabricated using boat-building technology and was the first all aluminium, semi-monocoque building in the world.

Adjacent to this is Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners Grandstand, completed in 1996. The stand is a three tier post-tensioned structure with capacity for 6,200 spectators.

Completing the high-tech group, Hopkins and Partners designed Lord’s Mound Stand, an intervention that retained the original Victorian arcade on the ground’s exterior while building a new steel superstructure topped off with an exuberant fabric canopy of PVC-coated polyester fabric.

Less public, but an important project nevertheless, is David Morley Architects’ Indoor Cricket School on the same site. It was the first indoor facility to utilise natural light for the playing area.

Great play is currently being made of the HD (High Definition) service, with former England captains extolling its virtues frequently to sell the service for the Ashes series. Sky claims to have “a huge number of people registering to upgrade”.

Trouble is that if you apply for it now you will probably get a response from Sky saying “you’ll be able to complete your order and arrange installation in around 3 months”.  So there’s a reasonable chance of seeing that scheduling stinker, the 7th ODI from Chester-le-Street on 20th September. High definition rain, then.

Click here if you can’t see the video above.

Familar foes fight for semi spot - Read the rest of the piece at Cricinfo.

England lose to the Dutch, thrash Netherlands, are put back in their box by South Africa and now throw everything at India, spanking them convincingly. These are not the results anybody expected; that India, the champions, are going home is difficult enough to comprehend. That it was England who did it, a team so laughably inconsistent, who play one-day cricket as though so little depends on it, is perplexing in the extreme. It’s wonderful, too, and not because I happen to be English; wonderful that this stupid format produces such ridiculousness. It encourages outlandish behaviour and cricket but the crucial essences of the sport still apply. A year ago, I don’t think you’d have accepted a captain suggesting to your team “let’s bounce them out”, even if that team is particularly inept at playing short-pitch bowling. If anything, Twenty20 encourages orthodoxy as much as unorthodoxy.

It’s all gone brilliantly bonkers. This time tomorrow, England might be in the semi-finals. Stop laughing at the back.

Sri Lanka approaching top gear - Read the rest of the piece at Cricinfo.

Sri Lanka approaching top gear - Read the rest of the piece at Cricinfo.

Golden opportunity for Ireland - Read the rest of the piece at Cricinfo.

de Villiers and South Africa crush Scotland - Read the rest of the piece at Cricinfo.

de Villiers and South Africa crush Scotland - Read the rest of the piece at Cricinfo.

Agricultural, impure, glorious - Read the rest of the piece at Cricinfo.

Netherlands’ glorious final over - Read the rest of the piece at Cricinfo.

Gutsy fighters alone won’t take Scotland far - Read the rest of the piece at Cricinfo.

A fresh new challenge - Read the rest of the piece at Cricinfo.

He flogged his Porsche 911 a couple of years ago. Wise choice, whatever this Ferrari’s model is.

Bob - sorry, Bobby - is dressed in a jacket that looks like it’s been covered in syrup, then rolled over and over on a bed of hundreds and thousands, before being dry-cleaned at the Angel Delight factory’s principle pot of gooey, disgusting shame. Bobby then fires a series of questions at a contestant, with all the seriousness of Bob Holness and Bruce “didn’t they do well?” Forsyth but tsunami quantities of eery cheese.

“Hold your gold there, Del Boy,” he winks, as the contestant fired a blank at his first question. “Nobody likes a smarty-pants.”

This is Bob Willis, the Sunderland screamer; the blancmange-haired tearaway with 325 Test wickets; him of demonic eyes in 1981. He’s a Bob Dylan fan of rare addiction; he even added Dylan as one of his middle names.

Bob, or Bobby, has never courted convention. In 2005 he propped up the table in The Wisden Cricketer’s survey of the greatest commentators, polling just 15% of the votes, only just sneaking ahead of Paul Allott. Perhaps wary of his on-air rants, and subtle-as-a-brick referencing to sponsor names (”Welcome to the Jade Stadium” a particular gem I loved), Sky soon had him grazing in the less risky surroundings of their studios. This has not stopped his furious toe-tapping at the ignorance - hell, the sickening insouciance - of players’ and officials’ knowledge of the laws, not least bowling rates per hour.

“Daryl Harper - hopeless, Billy Bowden - a showpony. Steve Bucknor - past his sell-by date,” he spat in 2005. Umpires get the full Bobby treatment, never more so than poor old Daryl Harper during the West Indies series in February. “He’s got to be given his pension book and [taken] out of there. He is hopeless,” Willis cussed. ‘Nuff respect, BW.

The Daily Telegraph’s Jim White tore into him and Charles Colville a few years ago, describing Bob’s “goggle-eyed rants” with comical precision. “It takes an act of significant will not to cower behind the sofa every time Willis – almost as angry as Colville – comes on screen.”

Out of the fire, into the … pink jacket? Who knows where Bobby’s career is now heading, but he’s rapidly cornering a niche in the cricket commentators’ market. Sky have a gem on their hands. Please, please have him sit in with Shane Warne during stints this summer and let us all sit back and enjoy.

If anyone has the video of Bobby’s Dazzlers to share, drop me a line. This needs global publicity

Daryl Tuffey and Lou Vincent might also be back.

Tuffey has been offered a termination and after consulting with lawyers has accepted it. The paper reports that Vincent has also quit, and while it is expected Bond will do the same, it says that might take longer in his case.

Heath Mills, the head of the NZ Players’ Association, said scrapping the existing contracts would probably mean the three would not get what was owed to them, but he added that there was no guarantee there would be another season of ICL anyway.

Bond was non committal, but said that he “hoped something will happen soon,” adding: “My training is going really well and I want to get back into it.”

So, I’m always interested reading about war-torn countries from the front line, and Reuters’ blog is just about the best going for in-depth, occasionally quirky insights from all walks of life, but especially Afghanistan and Iraq. Their photographers are slap, bang in the thick of it - it’s required reading for anyone vaguely interested in photography and journalism.

Their latest is by Masum Ghar in Kandahar Province, whose final photo is a corker:

Here’s our editor, Sambit Bal, on the relaunch…which is due very soon.

In my years as a professional journalist and editor, I have watched from close quarters and been involved in the design and redesign of newspapers, magazines and websites. Each is a distinctly unique challenge. Newspaper designs are about the optimal use of space and creating multiple points of interest on a single page; magazines, particularly features magazines, are usually more richly visual, and their design affords the luxury of creativity and experimentation. In scale and complexity, though, nothing comes close to designing a website.

Building a website goes far beyond visual appeal. All design is part art and part science: designing for the web is a synthesis of logic, communication, technological possibilities and visual presentation. It’s about creating an architecture that is intricate, interlinked, flexible and robust. The bigger the site, the more complex the challenge. Not for a moment did we underestimate the task of redesigning Cricinfo, but while we were at it, it seemed to grow every day.

In my experience, redesigns provoke an equal mix of pleasant surprise and vitriolic hatred. But from what I’ve seen, I think it’s pretty sweet.