Bowling at Fifth Stump

Let’s be real for a moment: there’s only one match that people are going to be talking about this week. All else counts for naught when a team with the likes of Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers is bowled out for 49. However, this blog is supposed to present a balanced, unbiased view of the week’s action in the IPL, and so I will do my very hardest to avoid dwelling unnecessarily on a match that had me in hysterics for the entire second innings. That’s not to say that the week has been lacking action in other areas – Gujarat won another match, inexplicably, and there was a bit of rain at the Chinnaswamy meaning that the Royal Challengers’ match against Hyderabad was called off with each team getting one point and RCB escaping an encounter with another bowling-heavy side with their dignity – mostly – intact. Delhi Daredevils - W2 L4 The world’s most boring T20 team suffered through a winless week and, watching Kane Williamson and Shikhar Dhawan demolish the Dehli bowl

Great bowling. Horrendous batting. Men and women talking about sandwiches. Burned to a crisp.  Sober. Drunk. Hungover.  Drunk again. Tired. Freezing. Boiling. Cider.  Tail end runs. Friends. Shouts from the crowd only during the final session. Local players. South Africans. The elderly reminiscing about their youth. The score board never working. Parochial and glorious.  Frustration. Jubilation. The opening day of the Championship. The opening day of the Championship is one of the most beautiful pieces of antiquity we have in this country. Like many of its attendees, it sits a little decrepit, weighed down by generations used to instant gratification and the English Cricket Board (ECB), which does little to protect the grand old man of sport in its dotage. Occasions like Somerset vs. Essex on Good Friday show exactly why the Championship ought to be treasured. Around 3,000 braved the potential anger of family members visiting over Easter to see a day of quality cricket. To see

I've never been wrong about as many things all at once* as I have about the likely outcomes of this week's IPL matches. Seriously, it's been spooky. The unerring ability that I seem to have developed this week to predict the wrong result in cricket matches (not just the IPL; Somerset and Essex were also on the receiving end of my inaccuracy) could have made me a great deal of money if only I'd bet on the complete opposite result to the one that I had thought would happen. I'd be rolling in cash if only I'd realised that I am, in actual fact, a complete idiot and shouldn't be trusted to correctly call the outcome of a match. But, as depressing as it is to consistently be totally wrong about things, it does at least provide interesting material for a blog, and some pretty entertaining cricket while we're at it. And so, because I have accidentally committed to doing so, here's my round-up of the second week of IPL action. *Coincidentally, I thought

I like to think that cricket has made me more of a morning person. Spring has sprung. I now wake up knowing where I am, where I left my keys, and - roughly - what day of the week it is. I can see, and the majority of my limbs work when I ask them to. However, there's one week of the cricket season that always throws me off. It's a strange sort of limbo, where it's spring but not spring. The daffodils are blooming but the legions of fans have not descended on county grounds all over the country yet. I am, of course, talking about the first week of the IPL. Now, of course, we're well past that - the county season has started in earnest and the sound of leather on willow echoes throughout England - but it doesn't change the fact that for a week, the only cricket I've been able to follow is the IPL. Eight teams duking it out in various degrees of competency for two months whilst cheerleaders cavort on the sidelines. Purists scoff, young people love it, but despite