cricket

The 2011-12 season saw the transformation of Australia's state-based "Big Bash" competition into the franchise-based Big Bash League. Here are a few points which I think can be taken away following the inaugural Big Bash League:

My second column for iSportConnect can be read in full at http://www.isportconnect.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11342&catid=74&Itemid=193

Over and above all the usual tiresome attempts at April Foolery, this two-minute video from the England and Wales Cricket Board is one of my favourites this year (along with 8-bit Google Maps). An "innovation" almost plausible enough that it wouldn't surprise me if the IPL tried to adapt it for real.

Here's the ECB's accompanying statement on the balldogs innovation, post-edited to partly wimp out of the April Fool's joke.

Sachin Tendulkar is surely cricket's greatest batsman of the past twenty years, and maybe (in competition with Vivian Richards) the best of my lifetime. His genius, longevity and durability have given him records that may prove impossible to break. But the farcical pursuit of his "100th international hundred", which climaxed at the Sher-e-Bangla Stadium, Mirpur yesterday, is a blight that his illustrious legacy can do without.

Rahul Dravid is to Sachin Tendulkar what Bill Ponsford was to Don Bradman and Rohan Kanhai was to Garfield Sobers. Dravid, who announced his retirement from international cricket on Friday, was that exceptionally talented and prolific batsman who just happened to be playing for India at the same time as one of the sport's very best.

(The following is a press release issued by the England and Wales Cricket Board on 8 March 2012. It is reproduced here, in its entirety and uncut, except that I have inserted line breaks so that it may be read as blank verse. As surely it was intended to be. The original can be read here).

I've relaunched my central cricket webspace, cricket.rickeyre.com on Posterous.

After thinking about retiring it completely, I've decided to give it a reboot after successfully spinning off my cricket-only Twitter account @rickeyrecricket in December and raising my profile a little, including the start of a monthly column for iSportconnect.

Two items from the sportsbiz world caught my eye this week, both coming from the UK.

From London's Olympic Delivery Authority comes the news that boats transporting passengers in the vicinity of London's Olympic Park will be exempt from advertising restrictions during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. This is despite that the fact that these waterways encroach on the "exclusion zone" for non-sponsor advertising as defined by the ODA.

On 30 June 2012 Haroon Lorgat will step down as the International Cricket Council's (ICC) third Chief Executive Officer, having decided not to take up the option of extending his four-year contract. There are many possible directions from which Haroon Lorgat’s successor as ICC CEO could come.

For the rest of my first column for iSportconnect.com please go to http://www.isportconnect.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9994&catid=74&Itemid=193

Here again is my annual selection of the biggest stories in world cricket in the 2011 calendar year. Unlike all the media agencies whose end-of-year lists have to be finalised in early December to meet deadlines, this list, which I have compiled on an intermittent basis since 1996, doesn’t go to deadline until after the Boxing Day Tests were completed in Melbourne and Durban.