neilithic

I just stopped by after being away for a while and there don't actually seem to be any questions relating to cricket any more, just fans from rival countries having a go at each other. I don't think I'll come back here again.

I haven't been following the IPL that closely. But from what I've seen it seems that most of the "big names" have been pretty ordinary this season. Ponting, Tendulkar, Gilchrist, Kallis, Ross Taylor, Shane Watson, Sangakkara etc have all had really ho-hum seasons averaging in the mid teens, Gilchrist is absolutely awful, averaging only about 7. They all would have been paid pretty good money for their season and haven't delivered the goods.

I normally swim around 3 kilometres in about an hour. But I was thinking of dickering round and trying to do some sessions where I do some 50 and 100 metre sprints with 30 second to 1 minute rests in between. Which do you think would be best for burning calories and increasing fitness?

just 2 tests ago he became the equal fastest to 10,000 runs, sharing the record with Lara and Tendulkar, all of them taking 195 innings. Now 4 innings and 3 centuries later he's almost halfway to 11,000 runs. Since Lara took 18 more innings to get to 11,000 and Tendulkar took 28 more innings, he's well on the way to becoming the fastest. How many innings do you think he'll take to get the remaining 569 runs? He needs to average 43.77 to get the record.

The University Oval pitch was ok on the first (second) day of the test between New Zealand and England when it had some juice in it from the rain. But then it dried up and it was basically a road. No seam movement, no variable bounce, no swing, no spin. It made for boring cricket. I actually went home halfway through the last session on the 4th day when England were 200/0 and I didn't turn up for the 5th day because it was plain it was going to be a draw and it was mind numbingly boring.

Now we see the test between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh where Sri Lanka got almost 600 with only 4 wickets down and Bangaldesh are over 400 similarly with only 4 wickets down.

It's really boring cricket to see the bat dominate the ball like this. In my opinion test cricket should only be played on wickets where a result is likely, either a seaming pitch or a spinning pitch, but not these "roads" that seem to be becoming more and more common these days. What are your thoughts?

Jimmy Neesham is a pretty average bowler but in the New Zealand A vs England warmup match he's taken 3/30 against, pretty much, a full strength England side. Do you think that could possibly be Englands plan? They've found him easy to bat against so they throw a few wickets away with the hope that he'll be selected for the test series. Do you think this kind of tactic goes on at all?

Iqbal played in the Wellington team in this year's domestic T20 competition in New Zealand, and I was shocked to listen to the commentary because they kept describing him as the professional player from PAKISTAN. I'm not sure how Bangladeshi's feel about Pakistan but I'm guessing he'd be none too thrilled to be described as a Pakistani.

If Michael Clarke gets a ton in this innings he'll go past the test run talley of Don Bradman, not only that he'll also become the 10th Australian to go past the 7000 test run mark.

D0 you think he'll get the job done?

Sachin hasn't scored any test runs in an age, it's been 28 innings or almost 2 years since his last test century and he hasn't looked like getting anywhere near another one. In fact in his last 5 tests he's scored just 138 runs at an average of 15.33. Is there anyone else that this type of performance would be tolerated from a top order batsman? Is he just hanging round so he can claim to be the first player to play in 200 test matches?

Similarly Ponting. Sure he had a great year last year when he scored a ton of runs starting against South Africa in South Africa and following it up with scores against New Zealand and India, but like Tendulkar he hasn't scored many runs recently, since his double ton against India he's scored just 225 runs from 9 innings at an average of 25. You wonder what he's hanging on for.

Do you think these two should go? They both seem to be getting selected on reputation rather than form, and as they both near 40 the chances of a form revival get lower and lower. The only member of the old guard that is really justifying their selection through form at the moment is the ever consistent Jaques Kallis.

Before he bacame captain, Michael Clarke had a pretty average career. 4700 runs from 68 tests at an average of around 47 with 14 tons and a top score of 168.

Since he became captain he's scored 1883 runs from just 17 tests at an average of 75.32 adding an extra 7 tons, of which 4 of them are over 200 with a top score of 329*. It's like having the captaincy flicked the switch and turned him into a run machine.

Can you think of anyone else who has prospered quite so much under the mantle of captaincy?

This score card came from the first class domestic cricket match between Otago and Canterbury that finished yesterday evening.

http://scoring.blackcaps.co.nz/livescoring/match15...

Anyone notice the rarity on the scorecard. It was the first time I'd seen one happen live.

I've been stuffing aroung killing things on the moors and plains for a while. Now I'm down to the last quest of this act. I'm playing as a barbarian and he's currently level 15. Should I go for it now, or stuff around a bit and get a couple more levels before moving on to act 2?

If it's the CHAMPIONS league you'd think that the champion team from each country's domestic tournament would get direct entry and the extra teams would have to qualify. Instead 4 Indian teams, 2 Australian and 2 South African teams got direct entry whereas the winners of the domestic competition from the West Indies, England, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka etc had to fight each other to qualify.

What exactly have Kolta Knight Rides done to justify their immediate qualification? their first two games they get thrashed by the Delhi Daredevils and then the Auckland Aces.

Well done to Pakistan for their tight win over NZ. And what exactly happened to England. T20 champs to T20 chumps. Was Harbhajan really that good, or was England really that bad?

It was a line from the 1986 movie "Aliens" but it was also a lyric from the 1980 "Back in Black" album from AC/DC. Does anyone know of any earlier uses or were acca dacca the ones who came up with it?

Drug use seems to be condoned in celebrities, just look at Charlie Sheen, and if they go too far and it looks like they migh get in trouble, all the celebrity needs to do is announce in tears that they have a problem and check themselves into a rehab centre.

If any other Joe nobody gets caught with drugs they get the book thrown at them. Why the double standard? Since the celebrities are the role models that young people look up to, wouldn't it be more ethical to come down hard on any drug use by the celebrities to try and reduce drug use?

The record for the fastest to 100 test wickets at the moment is 16 test matches. Philander so far has 63 wickets from only 10 test matches, 6.3 per test. If he continues taking wickets at this rate he'll get to 100 in his 16th test as well.

Will they go for it, for the opportunity of an unlikely win to hold onto their top spot? Or will they try to hang on for a draw to try and minimise the damage that a secont test loss in the series would cause?

And maybe New Zealand should have the GOLDEN fern.

Sorry to my Australian contacts, I just had to have a little dig.

Whenever they show Usain Boult he's always smoothing down his hair, even though he's always got it shaved right back and basically doesn't have any hair. But he's not the only one, whenever they introduce the sprinters they're all strutting and preening and generally exuding an air of douche-baggery. Do you really need to be such a douche to be a decent 100m sprinter?