She spoke of everyone’s favourite insurgents, the “Talibanis” and claims she “knows foreign policy” because of Alaska’s proximity to Russia. Oh, and she said that McCain knew how to “win a war” when talking about Iraq and Afghanistan. “Win,” Sarah? This woman is an idiot.

And she’s not even that attractive, yet I’ve still received my first Palin-porn spam email. The world has truly, utterly gone completely bloody bonkers.

One for our Australian readers: what do you think about Warne’s insistence that Darren Lehmann is a better player than Steve Waugh? He’s releasing one of those infuriatingly addictive “lists” books - his top 100 Test cricketers - which is a total sell-out, but then he’s allowed to do these types of bullshit books. Because he’s a legend.

Waugh’s lowly 26th place was received with a few raised eyebrows in Australia when The Times first serialised the book. So what do you think? Who’s better? Darren or Steve? Mark or Steve? Taylor or Steve? Frankly, I think Warney’s probably got a screw loose, but then that’s why we love him: for his shameless lack of bolts upstairs, and belief in himself that what he says is gospel.

buy his book if you like. All proceeds go to a good charity.

“In the beginning was Warne, and Warne was with God, and Warne was God.” (St Luke, 2008)

In cricket, fielders have decisions to make when throwing the ball but unsure how to reconcile their instinct with a foreign sport, Trescothick’s men rushed throws to incorrect locations. “When we play cricket we know the percentages when we throw it in from the field,” Giles said after pitching two innings and conceding 11 hits and 14 runs, although many of those runs were caused by defensive miscues. “It’s different with baseball.”

Stephan Rapaglia, the Britain coach, said after the contest: “The deficit is in the knowledge of the game. Many of these guys are capable based on arm strength, fielding ability and hand-eye co-ordination and could be pretty good at baseball after ten or 15 games.”

There are some obvious lines about tiredness, the Pattinson selection and so on, but overall it’s a worthy read. In particular, on Pietersen’s first tour as England captain:

It will be the same in India. The first tour is the hard part for an England captain. You don’t get home conditions, and you have 15 players to manage and get ready to play. I couldn’t have asked for more help as captain – the ECB were good at taking the pressure off, but pressure is part of the job. The England captains who will last are the ones with steely determination to prove people wrong.

The always-fascinating Strangemaps blog explains:

In its most recent issue, The New Yorker magazine revisits one of its most famous covers ever. Saul Steinberg’s cartoon on the front page of the 29 March 1976 issue showed the world as seen from New York’s 9th Avenue. Mr Steinberg’s ironic, iconic cartoon, mentioned earlier on this blog (#72), has been recycled, imitated and parodied many times - and now by the New Yorker itself, as a  comment on vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s world view.

The world outside Alaska knew little of Sarah Palin before Republican presidential candidate John McCain announced, on August 29, that she would be his running mate. It seems that before that date, Sarah Palin also knew little of the outside world. She has been outside of the US only once, on a visit to Alaska National Guard troops in Germany and Kuwait.

Have a read of my preview at Cricinfo, and keep an eye on the site as we’ll be covering it quite extensively.

	Unwavering defence: An Afghan cricketer practices in front of a destroyed helicopter in Kabul © AFP

While the giants do their worst, the minnows are scrapping for attention. India and Australia are about to reopen some old wounds, and probably create a few new ones, but elsewhere in the world - in the dusty outpost of Dar Es Salaam - the lesser-known cricketing colonies are facing off in Division Four of the World Cricket League, and the stakes are increasingly high.

Ponting v Harbhajan this is not. Yet for all the stereotypes - yes, Jersey is more famous for its prized potatoes; Afghanistan is war-torn, and surely Hong Kong are populated entirely by double-barrelled-named expats? - the WCL is an increasingly important development phrase for Associates and Affiliates. The top two teams from Division Four proceed to the third division, whose competition is to be held in Argentina in January. And the finalists from that, if you’re still following, are given the chance to qualify for the 2011 World Cup, hosted in Asia. They may only be semi-professional at best, but that only adds to the Boy’s Own feel of it all.

Afghanistan, Fiji, Italy, Jersey and Tanzania join Hong Kong in the seven-day tournament, and their coach, the former Leicestershire and England batsman Aftab Habib, is itching to get going. His side are the current Asian Cricket Council Trophy holders, and though the experience of playing in the Asia Cup was chastening, it was a vital wake-up call.

“I am quietly confident,” Habib, who is 12 months into a three-year contract, told Cricinfo. “A lot of the teams here, Jersey and Afghanistan, are pretty strong teams. If Afghanistan can wake up on the right side of the bed, they will be very dangerous and with Jersey they’re just well organised.

“Having played a lot of cricket in the UK and occasionally playing in Jersey, I imagine they’ll be very well disciplined, and some of them have played county cricket. They’ll be tough. The majority will be hard to beat, but a lot depends on the quality of the wickets here and how they perform. They look flat and slow and may not last a day. It’s who performs on the day who will win.”

Clichés are no less prominent in Associate cricket, but Habib has a point. This is Dar-es-Salaam, not Durban. Its curators cannot call on gleaming new mowers and their outfields are more likely to have sown root vegetables than years of meticulously prepared clay soil.

“You have to look at the facilities of Hong Kong. We don’t have a lot of grass wickets to play on, and being an Associate team you have to bear in mind you have to be very patient with what goes on. It’s not like a major international team; you have to be patient and you do hit your head against the wall a few times.”

Habib is appealingly optimistic about Hong Kong’s chances in the immediate future, yet for all their ability - he is adamant two of his younger members have the chance to play county cricket - they lack the uninhibited flare of Afghanistan. Notoriously confident - their former coach, Taj Malik, threatened to throw himself into the Atlantic if they didn’t win Division Five - their ambition apparently knows no bounds. It is hard not to be charmed by a collection of cricketers, many of whom are refugees, whose country has been savaged and ravaged by war; whose belief is unwavering almost to the point of naivety. Yet they continue to win, and win well.

	A chastening but invaluable experience for Hong Kong who played in this year’s Asia Cup © AFP

“If we go through this phase safely, I genuinely believe we can get to the next World Cup,” said Kabir Khan, who was appointed coach last month. “If you give the players good quality coaching, in two or three years time they [could] compete with teams like Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Ireland and Scotland. They could go up that high, although I’m not saying they could challenge the big teams in 50-over cricket yet.

“I think they are in a much better frame of mind now. In 10-15 days you can’t do a lot of technical stuff but we’ve concentrated on mind cricket. It has been about tactical not technical cricket. We are working on getting them together and unified. We are trying to make the team united and teach them how to act as a team.

“In the past there were a lot of individual performances, but not a lot of team performances. Now we are concentrating on being a team. In both warm-up matches [this week] we have been down but have come back. Against Italy, we were 30 for 4, but the batsmen at five and six came and scored 90 runs.

“The players have said that in the past they would never have come back from situations like that.”

So far, so promising, and as Khan alludes to, there are signs of growing maturity among the squad. Even of growing ambition. But for all their optimism and hope for the future, what good is it when the facilities they make do with are so mediocre? It is a chicken-and-egg situation: they need to perform well in order to attract sponsorship; they need sponsorship to help improve the pitches and facilities that can harbour the talent they have.

“We need support from other Test-playing nations, facilities wise,” Khan says. “There are not a lot of facilities over there in Afghanistan. We need Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka to help us with facilities, groom our players and provide them with higher quality coaches.

“We need to play against their teams - not at a higher level, but at a lower level - and they will get a taste of good cricket. They don’t play more than 35-over cricket back home, so we need to give them 50-overs or even longer. If we get a chance to play in something like the Intercontinental Cup that will be a big morale boost for them and you will be able to see all the talent they have got if they are introduced to four-day cricket.”

The ICC have pledged a further 6% of their broadcasting revenue to Associate and Affiliate from next January, which will hopefully seep through to those who most need it. Despite the ICC’s gaffes in recent years, their commitment to developing cricket beyond the Test world - while often considered a hopeless cause - is admirable and necessary. It’s now up to the likes of Afghanistan and Hong Kong to make good ICC’s investment, and cling on to the 2011 dream.

The first matches get underway on Saturday. Cricinfo will be providing match reports each day, along with exclusive blogs from the leading players at Beyond the Test World

I’m genuinely sorry to lower myself to this level, but face it Aussies, you’ve had it coming ever since Warne retired. [tongue firmly in cheek]

If, for some ridiculous reason, you have any lingering doubts that cricket in India is not followed closely - that it’s some vague fad that a few thousand people occasionally switch on the TV for - read this:

Rahul Dravid, on the other hand, looked to perfect his defence, testing his judgement of when to leave outside the off stump. Ishant Sharma and Sachin Tendulkar had a good little session, too, walking up to each other after almost every delivery and discussing what was right and what was wrong.

The bowlers got an intense workout as well: Ishant Sharma bowled for an hour and 10 minutes in two spells, Zaheer Khan bowled his two for an hour, and Munaf Patel bowled for an hour without a break. Besides the normal stumps, the bowlers had a fifth stump as a guide so that they could get used to bowling the just-outside-the-off-stump line.

[via King Cricket and Vin]

Six months. That is the brief time that it has taken Steve Harmison to return to his best form: “career-best form,” Justin Langer said recently. And in taking the final wicket of Martin Saggers, Durham beat Kent to clinch their first Championship title. They were made to wait - Nottinghamshire were chasing something vast against Hampshire - but the celebrations are well and truly underway. Much of their success is owed to Harmison’s return to form: his return from New Zealand, six months ago, to bowl and bowl and bowl for Durham. He’s taken wickets in all formats of the game, at vital times, and has been their matchwinner.

As Rob Steen says, “tucking into humble pie is part of a journalist’s lot,” and although most humble pie is generally accepted to be acrid in taste, this particular bowl-full is delicious. We castigated his character, derided his perceived lack of motivation, laughed, pitied and shamed him. And to an extent, everyone bar the man himself, now has egg on their face to an extent. But so what? We’ve got we wanted all along: the fast bowler we knew he was capable of being, even if that meant he needed miles in his legs. I can comfortably stomach humble pie and egg so long as he continues in this manner.

He has taken 60 Championship wickets at 22.35 this season. Only James Tomlinson (67) and Adil Rashid (62. Err, hello?) have snaffled more, while his strike-rate of 41.5 suggests Langer was probably spot on. He is back to his best.

And yet, I’m bitter and cynical enough to wonder how long this new-found form and spirit and venom will last. And it’s no wonder, too, given his history. Is this a breakthrough or a respite from his normal self?

Somehow, in spite of all that has gone before, I sense a bowler now in tune with his own needs and those of his team. Munch away on that pie, and long may it last.

Just been told that the Battle of Britain music sent him on his way, which is great to hear, and have been reminded of the book he wrote, Flights of Fancy. Among his many exploits in the war, he managed to escape by digging a hole with a tiny trowel no bigger than his hand, and in doing so removed him and several others from a prison. Unfortunately the book is now out of print, but I’m sure someone somewhere will have a copy.

I like heroes, especially when they (as I’ve been told about John) don’t recognise it and don’t want to. What happened happened; he survived, millions didn’t, so there’s no point crying over spilt milk. He was enjoying his whiskey and family and whatnot right up until he died, slipping away in his sleep mid-conversation. What a great way to go!

Well done that man.

“They went missing after a training exercise last weekend on the south side of Dartmoor,” he said.

The SA80 rifle is one of the British military’s standard combat weapons.

It takes a 30-round magazine and is capable of firing 700 rounds of 5.56mm ammunition per minute.

I just happened to be on the southern end of Dartmoor yesterday afternoon (here, if you’re interested), but found nothing other than a sheep carcas and a mustachioed German woman of at least six feet in height. Dartmoor utterly rocks. In fact, it rocks utterly.

Incidentally, I’ve not a clue what’s been happening in the world of cricket, and I’m wallowing in my self-instigated ignorance. If you’d like to let me know what’s been happening, or if you’ve found the SA80 and plan on using it, leave a comment below. I’m off to the beach.

Sub-editors - quiet, unflappable characters who are calm when the pressure is on? Well, maybe not all subs.

It appears there is one very lively freelance working in London who is causing mayhem wherever he goes.

A “warning” email was recently sent by the chief sub at Prima, to her counterparts on other NatMags publications. In it she explains the problems she had with this dodgy sub.

“I just thought I’d offer you a word of warning about a freelancer I had in last week - and urge you not to book him in! During the course of the week, he became increasingly threatening towards another of our regular freelancers, acted in a confrontational manner with our editor, and generally caused uproar in the office!

“I’ve since heard that he’s been marched from the IPC offices today, after similar behaviour while freelancing on one of their titles. Apparently, he had two girls in
tears!” Her email ends with her naming the chap in question.

Not surprisingly, the email has subsequently been read by virtually every magazine sub in the land.

On one online subs’ forum, the chap has now been dubbed “the Klaus Kinski of subbing”.

Reminds me of Giles Coren’s brilliantly splenetic email (it deserves a read).

Jokes aside, I haven’t the foggiest who these people are or whether they’re any good at spinning balls. Perhaps you do. In which case, tell the world below.

And who should Andrew bump into on the tube home today? None other than Bruce Dickinson, Maiden’s lead singer and allround rock legend, sitting anonymously opposite him. Like any good rocker, Miller did the noble thing and introduced himself immediately. Happily, he’s even stuck a quote in to Cricinfo’s (frankly brilliant) QuoteUnquote section:

“I must say, I’m very impressed with that Mr Pietersen. His life story is like Henry IV, V and VI all rolled into one.”
Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of heavy metal legends, Iron Maiden, believes that England’s new captain … well … rocks

Pietersen rocks. But cricket rocks more. Anyone who’s anyone, wherever they come from and whatever they’re into, tends to surprise you by knowing and loving the great game.

PS: I wonder if Bruce has ever bowled a maiden over.
PPS: Sorry.

You see, I’m still bitter. I spent my youth watching this man fail at international level: six hundreds in 65 Tests is an appaulingly meagre record. And yet every year, it seemed, he’d be recalled for another go. Briefly he’d shine, clobbering Shane Warne over midwicket; in a growling voice of shared frustration, Bill Lawry would say “Yeeeees, see? That’s the way you deal with the spinners, the half-trackers. Whack it over midwicket”. Australians could not understand how “this guy” was so inconsistent.

In truth, actually, Australians were rather more confused why he was dropped so often. And they (Steve Waugh) also wondered why Devon Malcolm played so little, but that’s a dull story for another day.

These Hicky moments of ecstasy were all too brief, depressingly so. Here was someone so good as to be compared to the very greats of the game; who dominated county cricket like no one thought possible at such an early age. And his first-class record is sickeningly brilliant. Yet whenever I heard he’d bashed another ton for Worcestershire, I felt nothing but anger, blessed readers.  Another missed opportunity; another sodding English enigma. Think about it. If all these names were on song during the nineties, we would have been unbeatable: Atherton, Stewart, Hick, Thorpe, Ramprakash, Hussain  (and others). What a lineup.

Anyway, Hicky’s outta here. Apologies for the grumble, but what are you going to do about it?

Cricket is also a powerful symbol of Rwanda’s shift towards all things English. On a day off, the Conservative volunteers take on Rwandans at the game. Francis Maude, the Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, and opener for the British team, describes Rwanda as “a success story, from a country hollowed out, to a proper functioning state.”Mr Maude top scores in the match with 20, but his wicket leads to a batting collapse, finishing with yet another English defeat at African hands.

Cricket is taking off here. In April Rwanda made the semi-finals of an International Cricket Council tournament in South Africa, beating Lesotho and Mozambique before falling to Ghana, in its best performance yet.

“With Rwanda being a Francophone country, it used to be hard to get the Ministry of Sport to be interested in the game,” says Julius Mbaraga from the Rwandan Cricket Board. “Now, it’s not a problem.”

Well, it turns out that justice will not be served just yet. News comes through that Ed Joyce has turned down the captaincy; Shaun Udal has accepted the captaincy; Dawid Malan, the club’s brightest prospect since Owais Shah, might be off to Warwickshire. And poor old Nick Compton’s had enough and might be splitting to Somerset.

It nearly makes me want to support Durham on a full-time basis. And perhaps I will if we lose Malan.

However (there’s always a however on this blog), India is going to be a much tougher challenge, and Lawrence Booth made a very valid point in his Spin column today. Flintoff at No.5 is all very well in England, but not necessarily on the subcontinent.

Flintoff has a miserable record with the bat in India, Pakistan and
Sri Lanka, where his one-day average from 25 innings is 23. The vast
majority of those knocks have been played at Nos5 and 6, where he is
required to play with finesse. Yet the best time for a clean-hitter
to bat in Asia is early on: Flintoff is worth a try at No3 if only
because he doesn’t pull his weight lower down.

Johan Botha is no match for Kumble, Singh…hell, even Sehwag can rip it better than Botch Job. So I’m all for Fred at three; in fact, never lower than No.5 again.

As ever at these things, you hear some great anecdotes from the players and I thought the following were worth sharing. Ramprakash, you will recall, took three months to advance from 99 hundreds and Boycott was in his usual rumbunctious form, remarking as soon as he arrived: “Bloody hell Ramps, I’d have lent you one of mine if you wanted. I’ve got plenty.”

I’ve always hated the quasi-religious feel to American politics. Watching Joe Public burst into tears at the sight of his favourite democratic candidate is distinctly un-British. Yet the interest surrounding this campaign has been astonishing, even taking into account the false sense of drama, of celebrity, noise, money and colour which often characterises politics in the States.

And yet, can you imagine David Cameron or Gordon Brown whipping the cynical British public into such a frenzy, instilling their vision into our minds? No, nor me. For once, I’m a little jealous of America. I love all the tradition of our politics (apart from the unelected Lords, who should all be put in a home), but how can Cameron and co engage with our public with the same infectious spirit of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton?

It’s early days still, and he will come a cropper sooner or later, but his confidence and enthusiasm in winning has been utterly infectious. The key in this series has been the unretiring of Steve Harmison and the awesome form of Andrew Flintoff - two players who most captains would adore to have firing fit. But it’s clear Pietersen is making early demands in his tenure. He is making it clear to the selectors what team he wishes to captain, and by doing so, sees no reason why England should lose. Ever, it seems.

It will all come tumbling down at some point, and that will be his real test, but to witness his leadership in this series has been to watch a man utterly in control of his own destiny. And, crucially, England’s too.

Samit Patel didn’t do much in the third ODI. Five wickets, third-odd runs and two excellent catches. But he did (as did his colleagues) get a bit over-excited with overthrows, and also failed to stop one exocet from Pietersen himself. The captain gave Patel a furious hairdrying. “For FUCK’S sake” he roared, even though England had the game in the bag.

However long the fairytale lasts, these early days are crucial to guaging how successful his tenure will be, and how England will play their cricket over the next few years. It’ll be aggressive, powerful, attractive and unrestrained and long may it continue.

Steve Harmison thinks so: “I think those speed guns are a load of crap. Somehow the white ball goes faster - I bowled 83-84mph in the Test match, and 93mph in the one-dayers. It’s crazy. I hadn’t bowled a ball for ten days.”

He has more to say:

But bowlers have always tried to give themselves an advantage and generally, unless it has been blatant, umpires have turned a blind eye. Suncream-laden sweat or lip balm has the same effect on leather as mint-infused saliva. Why do you think so many bowlers in the 1950s wore Brylcreem? In 1921, Johnny Douglas, the England captain, threatened to report Arthur Mailey, the Australia leg spinner, for using resin to grip the ball. Mailey countered by pointing out that Douglas’s thumbnail was worn to the bone by picking at the ball’s seam to aid his own bowlers.

Britain has its own nutters, like anywhere else, but we also do a very fine line in polite protesting. Admittedly these are all too rare, but they’re there. We are a nation of disgruntled, bitter bastards yet quite content to formalise our anger, funnelling it into a solid statement of intent via grown-up means. The best example comes from The Manifesto Club, a group of drunken farts who are mightily pissed off about the ban on booze in public.

So far, so normal. But how are they gaining publicity for their campaign? That’s right: by staging a picnic. Admittedly, picnics are an example of outdoor drinking and so forth, but the whole idea couldn’t be more equisitely British. “Right, you swines. I’ll show you. Come on, chaps - let’s stick it up them and hold a picnic in Hyde Park.”

Well done them.

“It was my job to keep the shine on the new ball for as long as possible with a bit of spit and a lot of polish,” he said in his autobiography Coming Back To Me. “And through trial and error I finally settled on the type of spit for the task at hand.

“It had been common knowledge in county cricket for some time that certain sweets produced saliva which, when applied to the ball for cleaning purposes, enabled it to keep its shine for longer and therefore its swing.” He found Murray Mints worked the best.

Of course, using artificial means of doctoring a cricket ball is illegal (think bottle tops, sand, a handful of gravel, etc), but the laws surrounding sweets are less clear. After all, it’s only affecting the saliva - and the ICC showed hitherto hidden powers of sense when they told the BBC: “It depends on the evidence and circumstances, so if something is brought to our attention it would be dealt with,” he said. “But where do you stop, for example, if you start to try to stop everyone who is chewing gum?”

Prezactly. This has been going on since WG Grace first wondered whether he should buy a razor. Moving on.

Just wondered why you haven’t blogged about this new cricket
slasher movie yet "I know how many runs you scored last summer".
Sounds like a laugh. Do you know anyone who’s seen it? Any reviews?

Anyone?

When I put the story up, I was intrigued by the quotes from David Morgan, el presidento. Politically Pakistan is very fragile indeed, and the concerns players have in travelling to such a fractious country are entirely warranted. And instead of cancelling the tournament entirely, which seemed the most likely solution, it’s been postponed to appease Pakistan (and, one presumes, India, who backed the hosts to the hilt).

Morgan and co insist this was no act of appeasement, that the ICC aren’t merely avoiding a bigger issue by pacifying Pakistan. You have to wonder, though, just where this leaves Pakistan’s future as an international country. Australia haven’t been there since 1998. England crap themselves at the very thought of venturing there, and New Zealand, well, they’ve never really enjoyed the whole bombing thing.

The rift between the Asian bloc and other Full Member nations in the ICC is set to widen with each year I fear.

I’m confused by the apparent sacking of Mike Selvey from TMS. I’ve always found him an analytical, generous figure in a box often containing some loud and abrasive characters. He’s been broadcasting for nearly my entire life, and is one of the voices I instinctively trusted to be quietly witty and unfailingly accurate. But he’s clearly not part of Adam Mountford’s grander plans:

Firstly I would again like to thank Mike for his outstanding contribution to the programme. The decision was not an easy one, but we felt that the time was right to introduce some more recent Test cricketers into the commentary mix.

Over the 51 years of the programme TMS has always evolved and occasionally a new voice has arrived. It is important for the commentary team to have a blend of experiences, backgrounds and voices.

The mix is the crucial part of the success of the programme and we felt that a couple of more current names would bring listeners a different viewpoint.

A spokesman from the BBC said last week that “we’re constantly evolving and refreshing the team. People come and go all the time, to provide a balance of voices.” Really? That might well be the plan, but - borrowing a cricketing cliche - hasn’t the bedrock of TMS been the consistency of selection? And do the public really want an ever-changing lineup instead of trusted voices?

Selvey and others have hit back very strongly indeed.

“Once upon a time Test Match Special was part of a great tradition of BBC radio,” Mr Selvey, who provided ball-by-ball description for the programme for 24 years until he was dropped, said.

“But they are bringing in commentators with little knowledge of the game, especially of the cadences of Test Match cricket.”

And there’s more…

“They must sit there with reference books on their laps, they just don’t know enough about the game,” one source close to the programme said.

“Some of the one-day internationals have been perfectly dreadful, very much B Team.

“They are coming from the shop floor of the sports room, we need two or three really top flight commentators, that is all that Test Match Special needs to get by, they have got to be the best.

Where do you stand on it, and who would you have in your lineup?

“After careful consideration and having taken advice from several people who have been close to me throughout my career, I have decided to retire from one-day international cricket with immediate effect,” said Harmison in a statement. “This has been a difficult decision but I want to play at the highest level for as long as I can and believe that concentrating solely on Test cricket is the best way forward for me during the next phase of what will hopefully be a long England career.”