Net bunny - part time bowlers please apply

Net Bunny = Lloydy Wickman urges you to get to nets. Batsmen are vulnerable. Wickman actually took a net wicket last Thursday with a big swinging yorker.

Give it a couple of weeks and a gentle away swinger pitched up will be massacred along the floor and will probably bypass tender ankle bones by millimetres.

Right now if you can put it on the spot you are going to look like Curtley Ambrose.

Lloydy was taken apart. The Great Iqbal was unplayable. A wicketkeeper bowled Tun Up. Get down there now. Feel good about your season...

Harbhajan Dictionary Stratagem worked...

As revealed here last week (and everywhere else) the Indian strategy of going through 47 Asian languages to find one where Monkey sounds like another kind of insult has worked. He's been fined a bit of large and got off the major charge of being a racist.

At what point are we supposed to just give up? Is Mike Proctor really stupid or something? Is that what we should believe? He did nothing about ball tampering at The Oval and contributed to a moronic end to a Test Match and did something here and contributed to a moronic end to a Test Match.

On both occasions losts of press based posturing got the the verdicts turned around. At the Oval someone suspected someone else was cheating. But it wasn't proved. Here someone suspected someone was a racist. It was proved. And then it wasn't.

Two men who we have no reason to doubt as being decent fellows from the cricket world - Bucknor and Proctor - have been done over in no uncertain terms by political expediency.

Its not that Wickman cares deeply about the spirit of the game or anything its just that he now can't be bothered to trust the outcome of any meeting until the PR johnnies and lawyers have finished up.

Wickman understands that most of the Australian team believes its all a stitch up and Harbhajan was bang to rights...

Wickman's delighted really. What it shows is that the ICC is really rather like a British Public School. Deep down, no one in the place wants to believe that a boy has broken the school code. So if the boy can come up with an excuse that is just about plausible ("Sir I did not have compromising relations with the Cook's daughter, it was all a misunderstanding. A chip had fallen down her blouse, it was burning hot and I was simultaneously trying to remove it from underneath her skirt and from down her top" "Oh that's all right Wickman Major it was obviously wrong that you were in the Cook's daughter's bedroom naked at 3am but jolly good that you were otherwise she'd have been scarred for life") he'll be punished but his future will not be ruined.

Cricket Season Starts Today!

Boys, boys, boys (and Alison). It's back. The cricket season is back! It starts today, at 9pm at Tiffin School with Winter Nets.

And don't you know that Mrs Wickman is actually quietly pleased. Not just because she'll get the Sky+ remote control every Thursday night for the foreseeable future - Wickman's secret lair will ring out to the theme tunes of Property Ladder and Escape to a Mansion or How to Get Your Husband to do DIY jobs. No - more importantly she will be able to re-display the Wickman heirlooms and other knick-knackery that has to be cleared away every November. Here we find one of Wickman's proud collection of smurfs...

It is cleared away, readers, to prevent the crashing square cut and the ferocious pull shot from decapitating figurines, smashing vases and eviscerating flower displays. It is cleared away to protect the world's stock of superglue and while she's at it the Wickettes are warned to stay away from the sitting room for fear they connect with 2.9lbs of English Willow around the gizzard.

For, Wickmen, the only place with a big enough mirror to practice cricket strokes in the closed season is Wickman's sitting room. The big mirror in there is perfect for the illustration and ironing out of every technical flaw. In November Wickman is a right-handed Gower, an English Keith Miller a surburban Brian Lara.

Tonight, he'll be a ring rusty club cricketer in Kingston, Surrey. But oh my, like the first mini-skirt in Chelsea or shades on the train or cuckoo in Spring, the first net of the year is like a clarion call. Summer is coming...

Adelaide Test - vulnerable down under?

With hours to go until the final test starts in Australia, the world's cricketophiles are rubbing their hands at the prospect of a fitting denouement to a classic series.

Its had everything. Big innings from some of the most exciting players in the world on either side. Landmark wickets. Fiery fast bowling to warm the soul and loosen the bowels.

Politics. Oh the politics. A global (well, in the 8 or so countries that bother to play the game) debate around what's just not cricket and what is. Racism - sort of. A duck for Mr Cricket.

But what's quite exciting is the prospect that, bar a freakish over from Michael Clarke and some unfortunate umpiring decisions this could well be a title decider.

It's exciting because Australia haven't lost a series in Australia for so long Wickman thinks it must have a been a strong West Indian side that did it to them. And if India do pull off another test victory in the next five days it will send a shivver down the spine of Cricket Australia.

Because its not as if India have really got any bowling is it? Kumble apart, they've hardly picked Harby in the last few years. The seamers are all about 12. Their openers have been getting out for fun. Yuvraj has crashed and burned at Test level again.

So how the heck have Australia lost a test? And, should they even have the luxury of being 2-1 up in the first place? With Hayden on the slide towards retirement and them lacking much bowling beyond Clark and Lee, could someone take the Aussies down again soon?

No More Balls Says Crane

News reaches Wickman that production of the Crane ball has fallen into abeyance. An absence of raw materials is cited. The original ball has been dismantled so that documents could be bound together in bundles and at the same time an ugly stationery cupboard manager is refusing to order more. It's this kind of petty narrowmindedness that is holding Britain back.

Indoor Cricket

The thought of nets at Tiffin has turned Wickman's mind to indoor cricket. Ever played indoor cricket? Wickman doesn't mean that odd game people play in gyms. Oh no. Wickman means proper indoor cricket. The sort you can only play with a sibling because only a brother would be so desperate to ram a victory down your throat in a game as totally unlike the real game as indoor cricket. And know that the bragging rights were totally between the two of you. No point telling his mates he'd won at it. He'd have to explain what he was doing for hours on end in a dark corridor with bits of balsa and a squash ball + gaffer tape.

You can only really play this version properly if you live in a block of flats (as Wickman and Wickbro once did half way around the world in a country that had about three cricket pitches at a time when Wickman Snr was too tight to pay for membership for his eldest progeny at one of the cricket clubs) and be too lazy to go down in the lift and play in the carpark. You then need to have been so shite at woodwork that they would only let you play with balsa wood because it was so cheap. You glue two bits together. Then you get a jigsaw and cut a bat handle shape out. With some sandpaper you spend what feels like days (probably five or six minutes - you don't want to get caught by the paedo woodwork teacher making a suspicious hand motion) sanding the handle down. It's still fairly square, but with a bit of electrician's tape... yes... perfect.

You need a whittling tool for the next bit. No self respecting David Gower fan in the 1980s wasting time in woodwork wouldn't want to create that marvel of bat technology utilised by the choir boy cricketer - the Gray Nicholas GN100 single scoop - as modelled here by David in the picture.

A bit of white paint and then draw the lines in on the front (the cheap ones had some sort of material cover where they drew crappy "willow" lines on - I bet David had the oiled version) and paint the scoop red and we're good to go.

Choice of ball could be problematic. Table tennis balls broke too easily and the spin was too difficult to control. Marbles dented the bat. Squash balls were perfect but were difficult to see in the corridor (not the corridor of uncertainty, we had to play in the corridor - doors off left and right opened for square cuts and slap shots) and there was room for abuse by bowlers (if your brother just happens to have his knees in front of the shoebox wicket a swiftly delivered yellow spot can do real damage).

Most games went on for hours. Each bat had ten wickets obviously and scores were kept meticulously. As with garden cricket, often famous guitarists would line up against dead poets. There was something about a Byron century in boundaries that was, well, poetic. If someone got their eye in it was fiendishly difficult to get them out. Pace was severely restricted and you could only be out bowled or on a return catch so largely it was down to lapses in concentration or massive spin to do damage. Wickbro of course never realised that a hot squash ball delivers more friction and therefore more turn. Silly boy never payed attention in physics.

Mostly play would be called by the return home of Wickman Snr or Wickman's mum who would become enraged by the squash ball marks on the hall walls. Paint never quite covered them up, Wickman snr always knew when we'd been at the tippex and its amazing how hard you had to work with bleach and a cloth...

That's racist... or is it?

Finally the Indians have got their story straight. Harbhajan didn't tell Andrew Symonds he was a monkey. He made an unflattering comment about Symonds, in Hindi, which just sounded like monkey.

Dear oh dear. They've had the best part of a WEEK to come up with this...

Shaun Pollock Packs It In

Wickman salutes Shaun Pollock who has announced his International retirement. However, at the same time, it is worth pointing out that he did for women cricket fans what Petah Beeeeedsleeee and Joleyn Lescott do for female footer fans. Ugly? He makes strong men weep and women miscarry.

Wickman Mourns South African Dominance

...or rather the West Indian capitulation in a series they were one up in and looking feisty after the first test. Now they are getting spanked. When Wickman was first introduced to cricket the West Indies were the dominant force in the world game. As a lad, when cricket from abroad was rarely seen at all, snatching an hour on Saturday lunchtime when it was on Grandstand was heaven. Watching those bowlers pound in and kill people had roughly the same effect on the Wickman digestive system as a Lamb Phall would have these days... "burn, burn, burn... the ring of fiiiiiiyah, the ring of fiiiiiiiire".

They were stunningly brilliant. By surviving the Packer assualt on the World game through World Series Cricket and coming through it with a production line of evil fast bowlers like Roberts, Marshall, Holding, Garner, Croft, Ambrose, Walsh and the most exciting batsmen on the world stage in Lloyd, Richards, Richardson, Haynes, Greenidge, Gomes, Kalicharran they were invincible AND brilliant to watch - even in the field - lead by keeper Derryck Murray they were electric in an era where stopping the ball in the ring with a foot was considered the modern equivalent of a one handed miracle catch by Colly or Jonty.

Right now they are screwed. The batting is more fragile than Nasser Hussain's Poppadum fingers. Which is a nightmare because you can't bat away the excuses in the same way that you can over the decline in their bowling pipeline - which is based on the lure of basketball taking away all the tall guys. Sachin, Lara, Bradman, Ponting - they aren't big men. It was held together by BC Lara and Charderpaul (antoher couple of titches) for ages which disguised an almost total lack of other talent. Now Chanders is there alone like the Dutch fella with his finger in a dyke (this is not a reference to the pleasures of Amsterdam). At some point he will have to give it up and apart from the biff it of Chris Gayle, some spine in Marlon Samuels and the out of the tour Sarwan what is there?

Which made it all the more heartening to see them go one up in this series by playing good, aggressive test cricket in the first test. Decent 1st dig total, corridor bowling, pressure applied again and a textbook win. Then? Outbored in the second test and outclassed now. Shame, real shame.

New Ball Manufacturer emerges

Gone are the days when Alfred Reader and his employees hand stitched balls in the vale of Eden in Kent in strict rivalry with Tonbridge Sports Industries down the road.

Dukes balls are still made the traditional way, but by an Essex based company called Morrant.

The Australian ball industry obviously isn't old enough to be have been run by a proper family so their balls are named after some sort of bird. They make them with machines anyway.

It's only really Dukes and SG balls (used in India) that are made by hand now. 98 per cent of everything else is knocked up in factories in India and Pakistan on machines.

Which is why Wickman is so pleased to see a new manufacturer entering the UK market. A small cottage industry in bespoke ball manufacture has sprung up in Teddington called Crane's. The Crane Ball will be ideal for indoor and sub continent conditions and perfect for damp summers consisting as it does entirely from rubber.

Joey will be unplayable indoors with it, but the lack of a seam will not appeal to the dibbly dobbly merchants in the club like MS who rely on it doin a bit in the air and off of the ridge at the Kingston end. Finger and wrist spinners who need a bit of bounce will be delighted. The maker is particularly excited by the prospect of Zammak ripping a few on a hard track at Tiffin. If he can get some decent revolutions on it it will still drift and the built in unpredictability of the bounce will bring a sense of what its like to play on a fifth day test pitch to our own Wick.

Next stop Dragon's Den to pick up some funding for a manufacturing set-up as there's only so many of these that Cransey can knock up during his busy working day. Either that or we can set up a production line in the Lofting Suite.

Great opportunity for the Wick! Part II

wickman1863@googlemail.com

to

paul_ralph57@yahoo.es
date Jan 10, 2008 2:54 PM

subject Re: Attention: Sir/Madam

Dear Paul

Did the daughter die as well, or is she still about? If this guy is prepared to spunk $13.2million on a total stranger, he must have left her some and she must be loaded. I would love to meet her. Any chance you can give me an address or fix me up?

Yours Wickman

Great opportunity for the Wick!

Mr. Paul Ralph (who the hell is this? Wickman has never heard of you!) Manager Internal Audit/- Foreign Remittance Dept, Union Bank of Nigeria Plc, (oh oh...) Victoria Island , Lagos .

Attention: Sir/Madam, (a bit impersonal, don't you think?)

I sourced your email from a human resource profile database (what the... someone has put Wickman into a database? Who would want to potentially employ a fictional mediocre cricket blogger?) in the chamber (what chamber???) , my name is Mr. Paul Ralph' an account officer to late Mr. William Bryant from America who is an oil merchant Agent (whassat? An oil merchant agent?) here in Nigeria , a well known Philanthropist (he collected stamps?) before he died. He made a Will stating that $13.2M(Thirteen million, two hundred thousand U.S. dollars only) should be given to an citizen of our choice overseas (WOW! This geezer must have been LOADED. Do you think it was family money? Must have been. No oil merchant agent earns that much. How can I become an oil merchant agent if that's how much they DO earn? Do a bit for a couple of years, retire to the Wick balcony. Job's a good'un)

We have searched long for a reliable beneficiary still now that a random draw was made and your e-mail address has been chosen as the beneficiary to this Will (ohmygosh. unbeblooodylievable. This is amazing news! $13.2million! Wickman must check the exchange rate. MOTHERF... that's... wait... that's £6.7million. Wickman's rich, rich I tell you!) I am particularly interested in securing this money from the Bank because they have issued a notice instructing me been the account officer (Paul mate... I know you are excited but no point mangling the language... take some time... or is that it? The deadline's so close you simply don't have time to spell check it! Quick, quick what do I do?) to produce the beneficiary of this Will within two weeks or else the money will be credited to the Government treasury as per law here (arggggghhh nooooooooooo! Give me a number, fast!)

It is my utmost desire to execute the Will of my late client Mr. William Bryant since he is no more alive, both wife Thelma Bryant, and daughter Sheryl Bryant (eh? is there a daughter too? Now that would be a coup. Not only pick up this lottery prize, but shark the daughter. If he's leaving $13.2million to a random punter like Wickman he must have left her a stack! *slicks down hair, combs beard, sprays deodorant into boxer shorts, freshens breath*).

Please for more details concerning him and how he died, you can visit this website: www.cnn.com/2000/US/02/01/alaska.airlines.list/ (poor bastard! whatawaytogo! Dowwwwnnnnnn!) If you are interested, you are required to contact me immediately to start the documentation process with the help of a legal practitioner. and i need your information such as this

1.full name Wickman 2.phone and fax number c/o The Lofting Suite, Hampton Wick Royal etc etc 3.your age and current occupation ahem 35. Blogger and amateur cricketer

I urge you to contact me immediately (I'm on it, I'm on it) for further details bearing in mind that the Bank has given us a date limit, Please act fast.

Contact me through my private E-mail : paul_ralph57@yahoo.es I await your urgent response.

Mr. Paul Ralph Union Bank of Nigeria Plc.

Right - Wickman's getting on it NOW!!! This is a goldmine!!! Oh happy day...