KP

I drag this blog out of retirement ( if not obscurity) to comment on KP's book , because I think Blogspot stops you using "cricket" in the name if you don't comment on it somewhere on your blog.

The Books and Cricket party line is pro KP and even more pro the Book itself.  Notwithstanding all the juiciest bits had been leaked and read before I opened the pages ( or whatever the Kindle version of doing that is) I just really enjoyed it. It is biased, whiny and scarcely credible in places, but the bit you can't fake or ghost is just how much KP loves and understands cricket. A lot of people have rightly pointed to the Dravid email as a highlight, but KP himself comes across every much the cricket geek when it comes to talking about batting , tactics etc. I was never an unqualified KP fan the way a Tom Holland is, I like a bit more of the rapier than the battle axe in my batting crushes , but I did spend a disproportionate amount of time on YouTube watching KP knocks after reading it- and my mark waugh / gower/martyn/laxman quota has gone down correspondingly. That will be a temporary phenomenon, but is a phenomenon nonetheless.

It is a bloody good read- and you can put that on the cover if you want.

Golden Grahams

I have always been ambivalent about Graham the elder .

As a Cavalier in the great civil war with Gower I ought to dislike him according to the usual tedious, package deal online posturing. With (massively much) better cause, I ought to be indignant about the rebel tour. Even at the time though I just loved how he scored masses of runs. Plundering county pies, then seeing off the Windies, Wasim and Waqar in their pomp and even at near as damn it to my present age, scoring consolation hundreds off Warne. I copied the baseball stance in an idle moment arsing around in the back garden in the mid 80s and got stuck that way when the wind changed.  There was always an integrity about his batting that I couldn't help love.

Graham the younger , likely to be his replacement as batting coach,  was a more straightforward player from where I sat. The arc of my responses to him reflects received opinion. First, I profoundly resented what I regarded as  biased over-promotion of him and Stewart at the expense of far more deserving candidates ( Matthew Maynard, er..John Morris?).  Then  when I saw them both play for England , after a decent interval of scepticism, I acknowledged  that they were actually quite good.  While I never entirely warmed to Stewart ( my fault not his - as if anyone would care) Thorpe assumed a place in the pantheon of  the relentlessly and un-fussily good along with Gus Fraser, Mark Hughes, Dan Lydiate, Kirsty McColl and Shiv Chanderpaul (just below the ruling deity Allan Bateman). I've been a unqualified fan since- even one Partridge-esque autobiography didn't kill that. As if couldn't like him even more, if you look at the Thorpe story on the Guardian site he's using one of those retro Duncan Fearnley bats for a coaching session with England. A good Duncan Fearnley is the tool after all...straight out of Surrey.

Being quite excessively excited about:

1 First game of the season on Saturday
2 Glamorgan sitting at top of their division of the County Championship ( after 1 game...and probably not any more as I type this)
3 Going bat shopping with my daughter after her posh new Kookaburra cracked


In no particular order

I am tempted to add a reference to the start of the IPL here. I don't really mind it . In fact when I am away with work, turn on the TV in some mediocre provincial hotel when I've got a spare hour or so, and find the middle of the second innings on, it is a perfectly diverting way of spending an hour or so. I've often thought all the criticism of T20 and the IPL is basically the same as used to be said about 40 over (indeed all limited over) cricket and the old Sunday League , which latter seems to be turned into a treasure of the game by the most reactionary of pundits - the same people who were bemoaning it as the ruin of the game 30 years ago. Maybe more on that another time.

Clerihew corner- the Du Plessis edition

Faf
Is a laugh
But his sense of humour is nothing like as silly as,
That of....


Nah, got nothing....

Clerihew corner

Ravi Jadeja
Is not one for a wager.
When he needs cash,
He charges for photos of him twirling his moustache.

Clerihew corner

Virat Kohli,
Scores quickly,not slowly,
And he is certainly regarded as a monumental pain,
By Dale Steyn.

Watching Sarah Taylor

I don't think I have seen a cricketer so far ahead if everyone else on the pitch. Athletically she makes A B De Villiers look like Eddie Hemmings  (alright slight exaggeration) and she generally comes across  in her play like the good bigger kid forced to play the house match at school.

Actually now I think of it the Taylor/De Villiers comparison isn't such a bad one.

AB did risk undermining my life long dislike of keen South African cricketers (let's be honest that sentence probably works without the word "keen" in it)  when he bowled an over in a test match against India last year. The Übermensch trotted in and sent down the rankest , round arm middle aged village dobbers I've seen on a first class pitch. I've never warmed so quickly to a sportsman.