Buy the book, get a t-shirt, or donate to the whisky fund.

Like Ganguly doesn’t have an employee to wash his face.

The stunt double pretending to be Warne is doing a great job.

Has anyone ever read the paper with more intensity.

The IPL is back in India.

The IPL is back, so are the weird ass ads.

Sachin chipped away a 50 odd.

Hayden followed that up by top scoring for the sooper dooper kings.

Next game the old guys really came out.

Rahul (still not a 2020 player, but still classy when his team is falling apart) top scored and pretty much kept Bangalore from collapse.

Warne was probing like a motherfucker too, some of his balls wouldn’t have looked out of place in his best of.

Anil didn’t like being overshadowed and popped in with 5 wickets as the tail fell apart.

The cricket was scrappy, there was always something in it for the bowlers, a great collapse by last year’s champsions and a leg spin master class.

It was a proper cricket day, with 10 minute ad breaks.

Jesse looks hot in red as well.

The man is gone.

There will never be another Kumble.

It is not possible.

Being a legspinner is hard enough, but to play at his level for this long, without a ripping leg break is super human.

It’s like a porn star having a small dick.

Or a porn star having no breasts.

It just doesn’t happen.

Somehow Anil made it work.

That takes a special man, a great man.

To rise above all the crap that goes on in Indian cricket and be a genuine match winner for over 100 tests is amazing.

He was written off so many times, but something in him just rose above it all.

And that is why he is a champion.

He wasn’t exciting, not even to a leg spinner, but he still won matches and contributed to his country winning games, not many players can say they did that.

Compared with the other great test spinners of his generation, he looks average.

But like a boxer without a knockout punch, he is overlooked and underrated.

Sure Murali and Warne had the weapons, but Kumble could punch all day, or for all 5 days.

He was never going to win as many fights as the other two, but he never stopped punching.

I would say in the history of test cricket there has been hundreds of bowlers more talented than Kumble.

Yet he has out lived, out bowled, and out muscled almost all of them.

That is a special player.

That is Anil Kumble.

And test cricket was lucky to have him.

Things feel different without you.

I am having trouble sleeping at night, food doesn’t taste the same, and some of my arm hair is falling out from the stress.

Back when we were together things were easier, everything was so perfect, we just clicked and you don’t just give up on that magic.

You are hurting now, and I understand, but I need you to fight, for us.

I know it was too high profile for you, and the papers printed all sorts of nonsense, but we have an electric connection, you cannot deny that.

Sure we had our bad moments, but Sydney was a long time ago, and I made up for it in Perth, didn’t I.

It’s hard to find a good man Anil, and you are courageous, dignified, hot in a Ravi Shastri nerdy kind of way, and it’s you I want to toss with.

This new guy isn’t that same, he isn’t as polite, his hair has obviously been styled, and between you and me, I am not sure he is even ‘one of us’.

You can’t replicate what we had with someone else, remember it took two men to replace you.

They say you’re old, I say you’re Sophisticated.

They say you’re boring, I say you’re dependable.

They say you’re past it, I say you’re it.

You are the sunshine that warms up all my darker press conferences.

You are the song I sing when I see a bird or smell a flower.

You are the life force I need to make it though the hellish winter season.

You are my everything.

You do not merely complete me, you are me, and I you.

We are the ying & yang of the cricket word, and when we are together there is nothing we can’t achieve.

I wanna see you plow through the crease, over after over.

I wanna see you let the ball come out the back of your hand.

I wanna see that forehead drip with sweat, just for me.

I miss the way your hand feels before the toss…

So come back my brown sugar lover.

I need you.

With Hugs & Kisses

Your hairy little goblin Ricky

Return to frontpage

They are made of rubber and they bounce back before their injuries are fully realised.

Old men are not so lucky.

They injure themselves masturbating.

Thinking about masturbating.

Or in the nets.

3, of the 18 over 30 year olds in this Bastard Monkey Series, may not play in the test Friday.

Anil Kumble injured his shoulder wiping his forehead.

Stuart Clark hurt his elbow while putting a more realistic rinse through his hair.

Matthew Hayden wounded his elbow cooking relief packages for Roy, but he tells people it was bashing in the heads of Orphans.

That is the problem with playing men of advanced years.

They have chalk for bones, and vinegar for blood, not many people know this.

Mitchell Johnson has never injured himself putting in a labret or tongue piercing.

Ishant Sharma doesn’t hurt himself shaving his adams apple.

Because they are young you see, they could break a bone, and it would heal 8 minutes later.

Someone of Tendulkar’s age drops a packet of sugar on his toe and he never walks again.

There seems to be an obsession with youth everywhere in the world except Australia & India’s change room.

Will this lust for the elder gentleman be either side’s downfall.

Who knows, but stay tuned for the next episode of Grumpy Old Chalky Men.

No one denies this.

Two part timers, and both very very part time.

Michael Clarke has a great record against India, and Cameron White has a great record against no one.

India had three spinners, one a champion, one with a great record at home and a part timer of real skill.

Of the 5 spinners used in the game, India had the top 3.

India’s spinners took 3/370.

Australia’s took 3/166.

You could say their were mitigating factors, like Bhaji bowling shit in the first innings, and Kumble’s shoulder.

But the fact is they bowled a lot more overs, and went for a lot more runs, than two part timers, one straight off a plane, and got as many wickets.

India’s quick bowlers on the other hand, for the amount of overs they bowled, did a great job.

If the spinners had matched their output India would have probably won the game by a fair distance.

Reputations are there for a reason and Kumble and Bhaji deserve theirs, and no one is saying that Michael Clarke and Cameron White are long term spinning options, or even really decent short term options, but you have to give them some credit in this match.

Imagine that.

Better than Daniel Kitson, sure.

Better than Ross Noble, hell yeah.

Better than Dubya Bush, it’s neck and neck.

This,

“I will have a think about it over the next couple of days,” Ponting said, “and see if I think it is the right idea to bring it up again.”

Might not sound funny on it’s own.

But when he is talking about trusting the word of the fielders on catches, he is surely taking the piss.

That is George Carlin funny.

Never trust an Australian in sport, and never ever ever trust an Australian in sport when they say “trust me”.

How do I know this, because I am Australian, and I have not only claimed catches I haven’t taken, hell I once claimed a bowled where I saw the ball miss the stumps.

NEVER TRUST AN AUSTRLIAN IN SPORT.

Live by that.

That is why Sydney was as much Anil Kumble’s fault as it was Pontings.

Kumble has been playing test cricket since keepers could keep.

He knows the game, and he knows Australia.

So why would he ever enter into an agreement with someone as hell bent on winning as Ricky Ponting?

He won’t do it again, because Anil aint no idiot.

Ponting isn’t an idiot either or is he,

“Anil [Kumble] was the one who didn’t want that [a pact on trusting the fielder's word] after the Sydney Test for one reason or the other,”

One reason or another.

Michael Clarke might have been one reason, Ricky Ponting might have been another.

You know Ricky when you claimed one of those catches under the backyard rule of one hand one bounce.

I don’t blame you, a test was to be won, but let the umpires decided.

None of this trut me crap.

You’re not someone trust worthy, like say, a used car salesman or a politician.

You are an Australian cricketer.

Your word is no good here.

Just the way I like it.

At other times he is clearly speaking out of of his bleached asshole.

This is one of those former times.

He is talking about two leg spinners, and how alike they are.

Anil “he of the straight one” Kumble.

And Cricket With Balls Own Nice Bryce McGain.

Roebuck gets leg spinning, and in this case he even gets the men involved ever more so.

“Put them alongside each other and try to guess which man until recently worked in a bank.”

He has a serious point type point here, although i would say that Anil looks more like an accountant.

But why split hairs.

Leg Spinning is a harder art than making it as a professional yo yo er.

Somehow through his haze on nonsense Roebuck has always understood this.

Leg Spinners are a weird bunch of crazy mother fuckers.

Like writers.

Worst combination ever, a writer who bowls wrist spin, they make crazy people look straight.

Look at this picture, he looks like Mendis who looks like Gleeson.

It’s actually uncanny, there is simply nothing canny about it.

There is also some sort of new umpiring system in the news, but it hardly seems as newsworthy as Anil’s mystery ball.

I mean look at his finger.

Remarkable.

“Hey Unkie J, I want to be a leg spinner just like you”.

And I said

“Well I am hybrid Bubby/club legspinner”.

The little boy ran out confused.

That left me worried about the state of education in our schools.

Are kiddies not taught about the variants of leg spinning.

Maybe some on my blog are confused also.

Leg Spinning types and brief descriptions, by Unkie J.

The Aussie ripper leg spinner

Practised by Peter McIntyre, Sutart MacGill, and Shane Warne.

The main art of this leg spinner is the actual side spin imparted on the ball, which is done with a slightly rounder arm action and wrists made of steel. The objective is to spin the ball sideways on glass whilst maintaining a fairly consistent length and line. In a lesser hands it can go horribly wrong, in the hands of a master, can be combined with subtler straighter balls and gentle over spin to keep the batsman guessing. Mostly a leg stump line, can be less effective against a cack hander.

Signature move, the ball the spins past the outside edge.

The Bubbly Pakistani leg spinner

Practised by Mushtaq Ahmed and Abdul Qadir.

This is legspin with a touch of aerobics. It requires lots of hopping, arm whipping and an offstump line. This is the one form of leg spin that best encapsulates everything there is about legspinning, as all delivery’s are available from a straighter arm action whilst still spinning the ball. The objective is to trick the batsmen with a variant of balls so devishly devised that he regulary plays for a ball that spins one way whilst it spins the other way. Because the ball spins both ways it is effective against all batsmen, but the offstump line means a good length is every important.

Signature move, the wrong’un that cuts the batsman in two halves.

The Absurdist straight breaker

Practised By Tiger Bill O’Reilly, Anil Kumble, Shahid Afridi, Chris Harris, Cameron White and Piyush Chawla.

This is leg spin without the legspin. It is deception of the highest order. It is also almost impossible to make a living on. You must have the ability to sell the spin, whilst delivering the straight one. You can bowl any delivery you want with this style, but it doesn’t really matter, because you won’t be spinning the ball anyway, but if you are good at it, you will be aggressively accurate and steady like a train. The objective is to penetrate the mind of the batsmen through repetition and absurdity.

Signature move, the straight one.

The club leg spinner

Practised by Richie Benaud, Bryce McGain, & every West Indian Legspinner ever.

Not a huge spinner of the ball, has variation but mostly works on the fact that if they can land every leg spinner in the same place for a day wickets will come. The arm action is usually somewhere between straight arm and round arm, and this particular style comes in many wonderfully different actions. The objective is to beat you with subtle flight, spin and speed changes.

Signature move, the batsman losing patience and swinging across the line, but hitting it straight up in the air.

The Paul Adams leg spinner

Practised by Paul Adams, and me in the backyard, until I hurt my back.

Was once described as a frog in a blender. I like to think of it as a midget, wearing a bunny suit, trying to fling its head at you with a shoulder jerk so savage that it could kill the average ostrich. The objective seems to be not to fling your head at the batsman, but to make him think you are while you get him with your badly disguised wrong one.

Signature move, unknown.