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On the surface, Pakistan are playing South Africa. Hang in till the last ten overs, Pakistan start to play themselves. Then around the last 7-8 overs, South Africa start playing themselves. The series is Pak vs SAF vs SAF vs PAK vs PAK. Who needs a triangular, these teams are two faced.
1. The Run-out: Haider plays back to Parnell. Runs a few paces down, and as it should be Haider’s call (but isn’t), Wahab runs more than a few paces down. There is time for a mid pitch conference, instead Parnell runs Wahab out. Wahab looks so sad, if only he could see the run out, he’d laugh too. (And so we tweeted: Next, they should try and run before the ball has been delivered. Even better when the bowler is gng back to his mark.
2. The Run-out that wasn’t: The tailenders go for a second which wasn’t. Ball thrown at bowler’s end, Steyn collects, with his back to the runner, responds to AB’s call, and instead of knocking the bails at his end, about turns and throws to keeper. If only he could see the replay, appears he does. He resembles an annoyed Wahab.
3. Brain fade that wasn’t: It was just Afridi. Just over a 100 to get, 18+ overs to get them in. Boom Boom down the wicket to hit Botha outta the ground. Yes, he’s the captain.
4. Return of the other Y: So the other, other Y has gone away. The world is not big enough for both Ys. Today, Younis hung in long enough to face more balls than Afridi has faced in his entire ODI career. He even made it to the Man of the match. He didn’t smile much, spoke in Urdu. Refreshing.
5. Return of the other captain: Smith was setting the field. Appears he was captain. The other day he wasn’t, Botha was. It is obvious now, both teams complement each other – but not themselves.
6. Gibbs takes his lance out – he sticks it into Smith and his gang. As a result, Smith, Kallis, AB, continue to think about weird excerpts from Gibbs’ book (most expensive shag) when they really should keep their eyes on the ball. Catch dropped. Demands for a new tech called Speech Blurb Cloud find voice.
7. Steyn takes his place – goes for 79 of 10. And that run out.
8. Shoiab Akhtar takes his place – scores 0 runs again to see Pak through. In the 2nd ODI he faced 1 ball, in the 4th, no ball. He did not however receive a free hit.
And so we tweeted: Gng by the freak cricket they produce, SAF and Pak should be part of each others' domestic tournaments.
The Pak-SAF Freak Show.
England wants an apology from Butt.
england wants butt to apologise for his “deeply hurting” accusation that their players took a bribe to lose the oval odi...
english players were so badly hurt by the statement that they collapsed from 112 for no loss to 227 all out later at lord's...
when ecb chief executive david collier was confronted with the fact that trott not only called pakistani player wahab riaz a “match fixer” but hit him in the face with a pad... david said...
the incident was “fairly minor in nature”...
he also highlighted the numbers... butt accused the whole english team while trott called only one pakistani player a “match fixer”
david also said "there is protocol in place that says… although players can accuse… sledge… name call each other and occasionally hit them with pads…board chiefs are not supposed to indulge in such activities… besides trott has apologised so butt must apologise too…”
match referee crowe, when asked, why trott was not punished despite having hit riaz's face with a pad claimed match referees are supposed to stay awake ONLY when the match is being played.
