Warning: Potentially hazardous stuff ahead!

Here’s a much-awaited treatise on that great mystery of cricket – swing. While Saad Shafqat mentions a few interesting facts there about the past of swing bowling and touches upon the scientific simplicity of it all, he yorks me with the lines:

It is often said that reverse (super) swing is poorly understood, but in fact it is a simple and straightforward technique that you can try in your own backyard. All you need is a tennis ball, a roll of electrical insulation tape, and a set of stumps to aim at. Cover one half of the ball with strips of tape and hold it down the center, with the taped side entirely to one side. For a toe-bruising yorker, keep the taped side towards leg and deliver the ball aiming for second slip. About two-thirds of the way the ball will curve like a banana and crash into the base of middle and leg. The faster you are the better, but you don’t have to be very quick to create the effect. To bowl a menacing outswinger, keep the taped side facing off and aim for fine leg. The physics is elementary. The smooth, taped side creates less turbulence than the uncovered, rough side of the tennis ball. Less turbulence means lesser resistance, and the ball moves in that direction.

In breaking news available only to this blog, Cricket Australia has agreed to a quid-pro-quo with the BCCI which will ensure that the BCCI supports Cricket Australia’s thoughts for Australian and English umpires umpiring this summer’s Ashes.

All that the BCCI has asked for is that Cricket Australia allow SK Bansal and AV Jayaprakash to stand in as umpires when Australia next tours India for tests. As a bonus, Cricket Australia have agreed to the BCCI’s proposal that Darrell Hair would appear in commercials to promote the SG brand of balls, the manufacturers of which are faced with the distinct possibility of going out of business.

Stuck in the mire of ball tampering, national honors, cheating and forfeiture and the glue that holds all this together, the Spirit Of Cricket, I thought: why not move away from all this for a little while, take a breather and talk about a totally different *cricketing* issue. This is a favorite pastime of mine. To make XIs.

It was around this time last year that the ICC World teams were prepared to take on Australia in the Super (Flop) Series. Although there can be no doubt that the series flopped, I rather liked the idea at that time and continue to be thrilled about picking a World XI again today to take on Australia.

With the release by the ICC of the email exchanges in which Darrell Hair offered to quit for half a million dollars, an escape route from chaos has emerged.

Like miners trapped down a shaft, with canaries dropping dead around them, Pakistan and the ICC must have been wondering where the rescue party was coming from.

It came in the portly shape of a pick axe wielding Darryl Hair with his ransom email cracking some light into the shaft of chaos these issues have degenerated into. Little did Hair suspect, when carefully composing his half million dollar exit fee request, that he was in effect making the poorest decision in his umpiring career. Bringing hard currency to the table in matters of law, principal and honour is a foolhardy ploy in any walk of life.

Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely essential. - Will Cuppy

There has been lot of talk about “Cricket Etiquette” this week following the Oval fiasco. Frankly, I’ve become a bit too tired of reading all those opinion pieces. So tired that, I’ve tried to list down the different ways that a batsman could possibly react after getting out in an “Etiquette-Free” world.

• Walk as soon as the fielders appeal (the “Gilchrist” type)
• Walk as soon as the umpire raises his finger (How boring is that?)