Hitting the Fan

With India having gone the way of every other team that faces Australia, the s*** has really started to hit the fan in Sydney.

From this distance one can only agree that the umpiring throughout the match was poor; Bucknor has looked past his best for a year or two now and Mark Benson probably hasn't reached his best yet. And most of the errors went against India, although Indian fans should be wary of getting too paranoid. Even allowing for the part played by the officials, the Indian batsmen should have been able to bat through the last day, especially when they made such a good fist of the first innings at the SCG. Andrew Symonds and Michael Clarke may be many things, but world-class bowlers they're not (even though Clarke's Test average - 15.54 for 11 wickets -suggests otherwise).

As for the other controversy of the hour, well, who knows what was said, although I assumed that the umpires must have heard something and reported it to Procter for the case to have been declared open and shut so rapidly. Now I read that it was the word of Ponting and Symonds against that of Harbhajan and Tendulkar.

Either way, there's too much postured verbal sparring between players going on for my liking. No sooner have we gained an injury-induced respite from the lunatic Sreesanth than Harbhajan's piling in. Not that Australia can complain; they virtually invented 'sledging' and there's more than a few players in the current side who know how to mix it with the best of them. And then there's Nel and Prior (oh, sorry, the England selectors have seen him off for the time being).

Time to grow up, calm down and just play the game.

You Must Be Kidding

One of the other blogs which I always enjoy reading is Patrick Kidd's Line and Length. Patrick has the great advantage of being paid to write about sport for The Times and so is literally paid to blog, unlike most of the rest of us who do it because we have opinions and like writing (not that Patrick doesn't have opinions or like writing, I'm sure).

Mind you, being paid doesn't mean you're immune from the perils of mad people visiting your site. For some time now, a certain 'Mr.A.Nel' has been leaving 'interesting' comments in response to entries such as this.

Now I've got no idea whether Andre Nel is really leaving comments on Patrick's blog (do you, Patrick?) but, if he is, he seems to be at least as unhinged as he always appears on the pitch. And that, my friends, is quite worrying.

Decent bowler, though (I have to put that in in case he comes after me as well, but I do actually rate him).