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April's Pillock of the Month

Thought I'd forgotten? Today's the final day of the month and, as happened on the last day of January, February and March, it's time to highlight the absurdities and silliness of cricket with our regular Pillock of the Month poll. Following in the clown-shaped footsteps of Andrew Symonds, Jesse Ryder and Stephen Harmison, here are a half-dozen hapless loons who made headlines for the wrong reasons this month. Pick the biggest pillock.

Adidas For getting rid of the traditional cable-knit woollen sweater that has been worn by England cricketers since time immemorial. Yes, the new England kit looks rather good and, yes, the new ClimaCool sweater will probably make them more comfortable and, indeed, could make them better players. But surely standards have to be upheld?

The Canadian women's team Given a stonking 81 wides and 11 other extras in a one-day match against Trinidad and Tobago, Canada still couldn't win. Not really pillocks as such, but pretty hopeless.

Carl Hopkinson Not a household name to many of our readers but the Sussex batsman committed the cardinal sin for an opener of being run out twice in the same game, against Kent. The first was the silliest, being run out going for an overthrow off a ricochet, but it was perhaps rash to run a risky single in the second innings.

Mohammad Shafiq, a Mohammad Yousuf "lookalike" who tried to use his resemblance to the Pakistan batsman to gain access to the home dressing-room at Multan during a one-day international with Bangladesh. Just one flaw: the real MoYo was fielding at the time, a fact that hadn't escaped the security staff's attention.

Harbhajan Singh Asked to captain Mumbai Indians in place of the legendary Sachin Tendulkar, not only does he lead his team to three straight losses (not wholly his fault admittedly) but then he goes and slaps an opponent, Sreesanth, after the third. Banned for the rest of this year's IPL

The West Indies outfitters. Against Sri Lanka in a one-day international this month, Jerome Taylor came out to field with his name spelt "Tayrol" on his back. Furthermore, Devon Smith had clearly mislaid his shirt as he fielded for all 50 overs with a fair bit of masking tape obscuring the rather long name of Sewnarine Chattergoon, the replacement player who had lent him his.

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Cry baby

I've just come across this quote from Sreesanth on why he started blubbing like a girl after being whacked by Harbhajan on Friday:

"It was like a WWF punch and I was so shocked that I started crying."

Now excuse me for pointing this out but I thought the whole point of the World Wrestling Federation (which I think has been recently rebranded as the WWE in any case) was that the punches were faked? Did Harbhajan shape to thump Sreesanth and instead just slap his own left hand to make it sound like he'd clocked Sreesanth one? In which case, did the fast bowler burst into tears because he expected more?

Or is he actually referring to the other WWF and was suggesting that Harbhajan punches like a panda? In which case, how surreal.

Nel threatened with ban

The shy and retiring Andre Nel, a favourite of this blog, has played only four games for Essex so far this season but already he is two thirds of the way to a ban after picking up six penalty points under the ECB code of conduct during last week's match against Derbyshire.

Gentle Andre was reported by the umpires for two separate breaches of the code, one for using language or a gesture that is obscene or insulting and one for throwing the ball at a player or official in an inappropriate manner. Both are believed to have involved Steve Stubbings, who was struck on the legs in anger by Nel, although it is more than possible that Nel was actually aiming at the stumps.

Should he pick up another black mark, Nel will face an immediate suspension, something not to have happened to anyone since the ECB brought in the penalty points system. The dilemma, though, is that he only has five more games this season before giving way to Danish Kaneria. If he hasn't found some way of being reprimanded before his final game, against Middlesex, then his fans will feel rather let down. Mind you, with only 16 runs conceded in five overs, Nel was the main reason Essex beat Sussex yesterday.

Bread and board

Matthew Hayden, as regular readers of L&L may recall, is a bit of a dab hand with an egg whisk and a wok. In fact, he loves cookery almost as much as he likes accumulating Test hundreds and dreaming about wrenching out Harbhajn Singh's appendix the hard way. And there is no reason why Hayden would let his IPL obligations get in the way of expanding his culinary horizons, as this story reveals. Hayden was in Madras recently and popped into the Sheraton to cook lobster curry and a potato/onions combo that he calls The Masala.

The most interesting revelation, however, is hidden away at the bottom of the piece. Hayden, it is claimed, never goes on a tour without packing his breadmaker. While other cricketers spend their down-time on the PlayStation or with a pack of cards, Hayden is always working on a new recipe for a walnut and raisin loaf or perhaps trying to get the right consistency for his bagels.

In fact, it is probably fair to say that if you asked Hayden about the dough he could make in the IPL, he would assume that you were referring to the new ghee-based bread-making opportunities rather than the vast pay packets.

Opening up

Last Monday, I asked who should be England's No 6 for the forthcoming Test series against New Zealand and the answer, fairly conclusively, was that Paul Collingwood should stay in the job. Mark Ramprakash was your second favourite and Owais Shah your third. Few takers for Andrew Flintoff, who continues to look good with the ball and poor with the bat, or Ravi Bopara despite a run of form that has given him 499 runs in four completed innings for Essex.

This week, who should be England's opening pair? In the main this has been a settled area in recent years with Trescothick/Vaughan a successful pairing for 52 innings (averaging 52.35 runs together per stand), followed by Trescothick/Strauss for a similar period of time (average 48.76) and then Cook/Strauss and Cook/Vaughan (although oddly they have never tried Vaughan/Strauss).

Cook/Vaughan, the pairing over the winter, put on two hundred-partnerships in 12 innings together but the overall average is a slightly disappointing 44 given the opposition, while Cook/Strauss, a combination in 27 Test innings, averages 35.22 with no hundred partnerships.

One combination I imagine everyone has forgotten is Key/Vaughan, who had three innings together of 56, 67 and 28 against India in 2002. With Key back in the England development squad, might he be an option as an opener, rather than as first wicket down as he has generally been used? He made 178 not out today against the New Zealanders. There was also Bell/Strauss in one 2006 Test against India, where they made 52 and 9.

Who else would be in contention? Ed Joyce and Michael Carberry did well on the England Lions winter tour but with only 147 runs in five innings and 37 in four respectively this season they are hardly pushing their case, while those at the top of the early averages are surely too young (Mark Pettini) or too old (Mark Butcher) to be considered and in any case both, while former openers, are more at home lower down the order.

Have a vote, but if you do think it should be someone else, click on "comments" at the bottom of this post and let me know who I missed.

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An antidote to Twenty20

Nice to see that in these days of big-hitting not everyone wants to welcome the joy of six. The Sunday Telegraph has a front-page short story today about Harrogate Cricket Club, where players have been told that if they hit a six they will automatically be given out, after complaints from residents of the houses near the ground.

A slap in the face

Hilarious goings-on in India this weekend and (would you believe it?) Harbhajan Singh is again at the centre of a row. Apparently - and this is still under investigation - Harbhajan, the captain of the Mumbai Indians, took exception to being told "hard luck" by Sreesanth, his India team-mate who was playing for the victorious Punjab Kings XI in their IPL match, and Bhaji, model of sanity and decorum that he is, responded by slapping him one under an eye.

Sreesanth was later seen in tears. Although Harbhajan went to the dressing-room and apologised, he has been suspended pending an inquiry tomorrow and could face an ICC punishment even though this is a domestic tournament. Violence towards another player carries a possible ban of five Tests or ten ODIs.

This is hardly a first offence by Harbhajan, the obnoxious little weed, as Matthew Hayden called him, but there seems some irony in Sreesanth being the subject of his assault. The fast bowler is one of the most aggressive on the world stage, who is not above petulant staring, shoving or temper tantrums, which is a shame because he is also a fine bowler. If violence was to break out between two Indians, it would probably be those two: they have form after Harbhajan gave Sreesanth a volley of abuse for dropping a catch off him in the recent Test series.

Scyld Berry, the new Editor of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, has written of his fear that cricket is becoming more violent and that an assault will happen on the pitch at some point. How the BCCI, IPL and ICC respond to Harbhajan's latest action will say much about how they view it. Personally, I'd stick Harbhajan in a boxing ring with Sreesanth, Hayden and Andrew Symonds and let them sort out their grievances that way. I'm not sure that for all his big talk Harbhajan would last more than a couple of rounds.

County watch

Another Sunday, another Friends Provident Trophy match and the great thing about 50-over cricket as opposed to Twenty20 is it has enough lull periods for some light blogging. So, after last week's game at the Oval when Chris Lewis and Andrew Strauss were the main actors, today I'm back in God's Own County, at Chelmsford for Essex v Sussex. I'll post thoughts as they occur to me.

The interesting characters on display today are Alastair Cook, Ravi Bopara and, I suppose, Andre Nel for Essex, while it will be interesting to see whether Matt Prior and Luke Wright can push their England claims for Sussex. Bopara has been on astounding form this season - a fact overlooked by those of you who have rated him only fifth of the contenders to be the England No 6 in our poll. I know I'm something of a cheerleader for Rav the Chav, but his four innings for Essex this season have been 150, 99, 137 and 54 not out, a fairly convincing run of scores.

Anyway, Cook and Bopara were batting together after Wright picked up the first wicket of the day, Mark Pettini caught by Prior (yes, it does happen) for 26. The partnership didn't last, however, as Cook was leg-before for 12 leaving a ball from Robin Martin-Jenkins. Bopara then added 115 with Grant Flower before being caught on the boundary for 59, a relative failure by his latest standards. Wright's bowling looked nippy but expensive, going for 57 off eight overs.

Essex reached a respectable 291-8 thanks to 75 by Flower and 61 by Ryan ten Doeschate, but the latter was badly missed by Prior off the bowling of Wright. I say missed but Prior reacted so late to the thin edge that he only moved when the ball thumped into the boundary boards. Perhaps he was leaving it for the non-existent slip? He redeemed himself with two stumpings.

Rain hindered the Sussex reply. They reached 31-0 off eight overs with Prior on 21, having had a few angry exchanges with Nel. After a long break, they came back out needing 156 off 24 overs and although Prior made 50 before being caught, ironically, by Nel the rest of the team struggled with some good Essex fielding. Three men were run out, the most embarrassing of them Wright for 8 in a mix-up with Prior.

The end of MCC's influence?

For the first time in the ICC's 99-year history, the world governing body's annual conference will not take place under the aegis of MCC at Lord's. After the British Government refused a visa to Peter Chingoka, the head of Zimbabwe Cricket, the ICC was left with no alternative but to move the June meeting to its headquarters in Dubai.

Whatever your view of Zimbabwe and Chingoka - a dodgy man from a very dodgy country, I say - the ICC can hardly hold a meeting in a country to which one of its members is banned and I understand why they have moved it. It does raise all sorts of questions about the future, though, not least the planned centenary celebrations in 2009 and the World Twenty20 over here.

It would have been better if the ICC had stood up to Chingoka and Zimbabwe and said that he was "rested" from the board until the political situation in his country has been resolved. In any case it seems wrong that a man from a country that no longer plays Test cricket should have more say on the board than, say, Ireland's representative, but while the ICC continues to pander to Zimbabwe (mass financial irregularities swept under the carpet etc) then you can't blame them for wanting Chingoka to be allowed to attend the meeting.

It is a great shame that the meeting has been moved, but not because it represents another nail in the coffin of England's declining influence over the game. That has been disappearing for almost all the ICC's existence. Australia and South Africa, when they were the only other members of what was then the Imperial Cricket Conference, were hardly subservient to Lord's; when India won the 1983 World Cup they became a huge player in the game; there are now ten Test nations all with a valid say; and the ICC moving from Lord's to first Monaco in 2001 and then Dubai in 2005 (albeit for tax reasons more than anything else) ended any physical link between cricket governance and Lord's.

The MCC's role now is similar to that of the Royal and Ancient golf club at St Andrew's or the All-England Tennis Club in Wimbledon. The game is run, rightly, by the constituent boards through the ICC but MCC remains as a reminder of the game's heritage and its soul. The laws are set here and the fabled "spirit of cricket" springs from here - although no one would pretend that MCC does anything without the rest of the world's approval. That is not setting England and MCC up as superior to elsewhere, but simply that the game - all games - needs a grounding and a reminder of where they come from.

That is why it is a shame that the ICC will not be meeting at Lord's and why the centenary celebrations should be held there. Lord's reeks of cricket. You cannot walk into any cranny of the ground - not even the gent's lavatories - without being aware that this is a place where cricket is played and has been played for centuries. It is a temple to the great god Cricket and it is right that this is where the high priests should come for the most solemn occasions, in the same way that Catholic cardinals should hold their conclaves in Rome. Dubai cannot possibly create that sense of reverence for the game, that feeling of purpose and a grounding in what it is all about.

Dubai just makes you think of corporatism and lawyers and marketing men. OK, the cynical may say that those things are the modern game but I say that cricket should never forget its roots. Hold the annual meeting in the Long Room at Lord's under the gaze of Grace and Trumper and Gavaskar, with the Ashes round the corner and Old Father Time swinging in the distance. And let there be a game going on outside - even a Twenty20 match. All these things would remind the bureaucrats why they are meeting and to what they owe their salaries.

Counting the cost

Chris Gayle has been ruled out of this year's Indian Premier League after failing to recover from a groin strain that he got playing for West Indies against Sri Lanka. This raises a question about how much money he has lost as a result of this injury on international duty. Gayle was "bought" for $800,000 by Kolkata, although as he was going to be released on May 18 for the West Indies then he would have received pro-rata "only" about $600,000. Now, of course, he will probably get even less.

However, I understand that even if a signed player doesn't compete at all, for whatever reason, they still get a guaranteed 25 per cent of their bid price. So Gayle has lost about $400,000 as a result of his injury. Or another way of looking at it, he gets $200,000 just for hobbling around the boundary rope. No wonder Kolkata have asked him to "spend some time with the team" (ie, be used for marketing purposes) in early May.

Recently, Giles Clarke, the chairman of the ECB, said that he was opposed to England contracted players being in the IPL in case they got injured in action and missed international matches. However, as Sean Morris, the new chief executive of the Professional Cricketers' Association, told me earlier today: "What about if an England player turned down a million-dollar contract with the IPL and then got a career-ending injury playing for England?" You can hardly blame some players for wanting to gather their rosebuds while they may.