The Pakistan government is considering changing the name of the cricket board and the cricket team. Sources reveal that they have two options:

• Ctrl-z-istan and Ctrl-z-istan Cricket Board
• Undostan and Undostan Cricket Board

The decision will be revealed before the team plays its first game in the ICC Champions Trophy.

The government is looking at an urgent name change following the PCB’s decision to name Younis Khan as captain exactly two days after he quit as Inzamam’s stand-in.

If Mohammad Yousuf knew Tamil, he’d appreciate the saying Kai-ku yettinadhu vaaiku yettama pochu, approximately translated as “So near, yet so far”.

As a result of the pitiful ban he copped after his team’s “protest” at The Oval in August following an accusation of tampering with the ball, the Pakistan Cricket Board decided to replace Inzamam-ul-Haq with Faisal Iqbal for the ICC Champions Trophy.

But, this means Inzamam will not be able to play if Pakistan reaches the final, even though he’d have served out a four match ban. Inzamam’s ban would only be done and dusted with after the semi-final stage. My guess is that even if Pakistan ensures shows that one of the players got injured during the tournament, they still can’t get a replacement. I think replacements are only allowed if an injury was sustained to a member of the 14-man squad before the tournament.

“Who writes your scripts?” asked Graham Gooch to Ian Botham once. Well, who writes theirs?

I bet you thought you would not see greater drama than that. Ha ha - now watch the sequel!

These are moments when you feel Pakistan cricket administration is indeed a virtual world inside the ‘Matrix‘ as against the real world where all the cricket is being played, watched and loved. From the same perspective this latest episode was its ‘Reloaded’ (Younis) and ‘Revolutions’ (Youhana) sequels rolled in one.
 

Apologies for that misnomer of a post title. We bow to thee, Neo-nis.

Certain moments in cricket have been just classic - not necessarily for the cricketing skill shown, but for the unexpectedness in the result - when an unfancied underdog defies the odds, to stand up to the bigger cricketing nation and at times even shock them, surprise them - to me, thats what sport is all about. It’s about the underdog, its when David beat Goliath, its when a team defies 1-500 odds, its the reason I’m such an ardent fan of associate cricket, its the reason websites like ours exist.

What do you guys rate as the top underdog stories in cricket? In the meanwhile, have a look at these timeless cricketing memories from YouTube:-

Amidst stars old and new, shining and falling, promising and delivering, the performance of wicketkeepers of each of the three “India”s participating in this year’s Challengers’ trophy provoked a thought. How do we keep them?

Parthiv Patel first. We have seen his gloved journey from youthful brilliance to loss of lustre to losing the entire plot as a specialist keeper. All through that though he has showed impressive improvement in every outing with the bat. Aged 16, he saved a crucial away Test match on debut. Then on he kept building on his nudges and pushes to emerge as a dependable lower middle order bat who could score fluently either side of the wicket and, importantly, would not cower in adverse situations. He shone with the bat in his two Challenger matches this year (he had done likewise last year as well) and his performance could have helped him replace almost any keeper in the national side. But unfortunately it isn’t ‘any keeper’ that he is up against.