Cricket

He's no Jody Craddock.

jody craddock's paintings are terrifyingly good

nonetheless i am not unintrigued by this

Onions tearing things up down at what yesterday looked like a flat track at Taunton.

Christ, that sentence looks like it belongs in the cryptic crossword thread.

pick him for england! oh wait

bopara choice probably otm

Yes, it's fair enough. Bell's early season form was greeted with a sigh weary at the inevitability of it all round our office, so it's quite nice to see him getting a chance. Confidence should be up after the IPL as well.

lolz

Awaiting on another exciting Best of 2 Test series that I'm sure England will fuck up!

KP's shit form continues

Not many batsmen would have survived that ball, to be fair, especially if it was their first. Plz 2 be objective.

like you are with vaughan monty harmison etc etc

Look at this team! Who's been proven right? :P

KP and Freddie should've been concentrating on getting back into form in the counties, but no, they fucked off to the IPL to make money, fred got injured and is out of this seriesand KP did fuck all and is still in, for him, bad form.
Who's been proven right?

Flintoff would have bowled more overs playing county cricket, and would have in all probability sustained the same injury.

KP made a few contributions here and there, nothing much, but probably got a lot of useful net time in against a varied selection of fine international bowlers.

You haven't been proven anything. One got injured, unfortunately, the other received an absolute pearler.

lolllz

wonder if england will ever go through a season without a collapse. Spineless bastards.

wonder if england worcestershire will ever go through an season innings without a collapse. Spineless bastards.

And Charlton?

we're gonna win the league

redknapp for england coach

jol out

Only Harmison can save Newcastle now

good luck england!

BBC website has confidence in England.
http://i44.tinypic.com/doosgx.jpg

OMG Boycott reminiscing about going round to Brian Clough's house for dinner, at which Brian would do the cooking. Ol' Big 'Ead and the Greatest Living Yorkshireman together, surprised the universe didn't implode or something.

Boycs being pretty reasonable about Peace's novel tbh

Not read it, but it sounded fair enough, yeah.

Bopara is sounding like possibly the real thing.

prior out

Boycott is pretty interesting in the ITV Clough documentary that was on at the same time the film came out. I think this is the only time he's been interesting, but I guess a lot of stuff was cut.

Techie question:

Is anyone else streaming Test Match Special through the BBC website today?

I'm using Windows Media Player 11 with the maximum 60 seconds of buffering, but it still keeps clipping out every now and again. I'm at work with an excellent network connection (and I don't have this problem streaming anything else). Assuming it isn't a localised network problem (the same thing happened yesterday with TMS), is anyone else experiencing this problem? Is it a problem with the BBC's stream? Or is Windows Media Player just shite?

Thought Swann might make a bit of hay today.

xp I am, but using Real Player which might be a better medium with which to play it- it seems to be the BBC's preferred streamer.

lol at Boycs criticising Gayle's "savoir-faire" attitude.

Reminds me of an amusing exchange last night

Boycott: "To me, it's just sympto... sympo... symtomatic... is that right?"
Agnew: "Almost"

They make a good double act.

Jesus - that's going to hurt, a lot.

He might make his first duck now :-/

retired hurt = not out

Academic anyway since he's continuing!

No, I mean he might get a yorker next ball and not know where he is/what the bit of wood he's holding is

I knew he was continuing

Don't school me on the laws of cricket, bro

for anyone listening only, the back of Anderson's helmet has a whopping great chunk out of it, right at the back. If he hadn't been wearing it - boom boom out go the lights.

RIP

yeah it was horrible. Hope there aren't any delayed effects.
West Indies didn't look interested today which was really bizarre.

A lot of that is down to Gayle and his savoir faire attitude

Swann is opening the bowling with Broad???? Is jimmy unable to bowl?

Jimmy last seen talking to a bust of WG Grace in the long room and has been sent to sit with the duffers in MCC ties.