“Hello, little boy. So you think you are better than me, than me, DALE WILLEM STEYN. I would laugh if I wasn’t ripping your limbs off.  You should thank your lucky stars they even let the likes of you on the same turfed surface as me.  Just looking at your pathetic faces makes me want to hurt you.  Every single fibre of your being disgusts me.  It is hard for me even to think of you existing without tasting the bile in my throat.  I am number one. Number ONE.  There is no one else on the planet who can do this, just me.  Bow, fucken bow you little tiny insignificant bitch.  Lick my toes, grovel, GROVEL HARDER. You are nothing; I am everything.  You should thank your God that you were even allowed to be destroyed by me.  Tonight when you try and sleep I want you to know I am over your bed, mocking you, whispering a story into your ear, the story of how I finished you.  Vengeance, thy name is Steyn.  You are my victim, a virginal sacrifice before my godly alter.  No man, or Gods, can defeat me when I thrash out my weapons of war.  The world is mine, I own it, you aren’t good enough to be stuck on my shoe.  There are two kinds of people in this world, me, and those who aren’t me.  Can you feel me, I am the hot air on your neck, the monster in your wardrobe, the creak in the other room, when you wake up and feel like someone is in the room, that is me, I’m always there.  You ain’t ever going to beat me, just give up.  You couldn’t dream up a nightmare as bad as I am.  There is no chance your woman will ever look at you the same way now, because I have cukcholded your soul.  This will be the story you’re too embarrassed to tell your kids. Today you went up against an unbeatable force, a monumental monolith, and all you could do was struggle out one breath as a time as it took you apart.  You are an insignificant piece of dirt and I wiped you on the cricket annals door mat.  One day you will think you are over this, you will be hanging with friends, maybe enjoying a beer and some fishing, but then the fear, the soul destroying fear, will smash down on you, and your friends won’t know why you are frozen still.  In what world would an ant like you kill a lion like me?  Turn your head; you aren’t good enough to even look in my general direction.  I have smited you from the earth; there is only crumbs left.  There is only one, his name is DALE WILLEM STEYN and he is NUMBER ONE. Alpha, Omega, STEYN.”

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“Oh, he is so cute and loveable; I just wanna take him home to my mum so we can double team him”.

I know that is what you think about little Nathan Hauritz.  But behind that puppy dog exterior is a cold-hearted assassin.  One who will kill anyone to get where he wants.  An aspirational career driven sociopath.

Not only has he led many a batsman to their untimely and embarrassing end, he is also taking out Australian spinners one at a time.

First was beautiful Beau Casson, who was too young to die, but Hauritz took him out during a shield game, but made it look like suicide.  He placed sweets down on a trail that led Beau got to the edge of a cliff and Nathan ran up behind him in a Mr Squiggle mask and said boo.

Then Bryce McGain was taken out when Hauritz bribed Kallis with 7 pigs he killed with his owns hands.  When that wasn’t enough Hauritz showed Kallis and Prince this website, but most importantly the parts about Prince, Kallis and Bryce, to prove that I don’t exist and Bryce writes this site.

And now, Jason Krejza is gone.

It was probably the most horrendous of all Nathan’s crimes, as he did it with help of a whole team of suicidal Pakistani batsmen, and the Tasmanian brain’s trust.

It was disgusting, and when Nathan was finished all that was left was a puddle of blood, excrement and organs, with a newspaper clipping that was mostly unreadable except for the number 12.

Sorry to burst your bubble, people, but little Nathan is an angel of death.

One by one he is taking these spinners out.  Right under our noses.  Yet no one is doing anything about it.

Someone must stop him, otherwise Steven Smith will take a bite of some weird tasting vegemite sandwiches any day now.

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Then I deleted it.

Frankly, you’d be better off pretending you saw this.

Or you could fantasize about how a series like this could have started if Steyn and Sehwag were going head to head on the first day.

Anything to scrub the last two days out of your mind.

When someone tampers there are always voices, but when Afridi accused everyone in one go you could just about hear crickets (those crickets).

The loudest anti Afridi voice I heard was a fairly new boy on the block, the Dirty Dirk Nannes.  I love Dirk (proof is in the last post), but he is being naïve or worse when he says he has never come across ball tampering.  He seems like a good bloke so I will just assume naïve.

I have seen Victorian bowlers do it over my years at the MCG.  In various ways.

The most obvious way is throwing the ball into the square as hard as they can over and over again to scuff up one side of the ball.  If there is a cricket team who has not done this, I would be very surprised.

Scuffing the ball up with a throw gets you a warning from the umpire and nothing worse.  It is the equivalent of a bowler appealing for a decision he knows isn’t out, compared to claiming a half volley catch.  But you are tampering with the ball.

Scuffing the ball up with your fingers gets the entire cricket community wedged into your back passage.

Then there is the artificial way, sunscreen, Vaseline, zinc, mints, milky spit, and whatever the hell else you can think of.  Victorians have tried this, everyone has tried this.

Bowlers experiment with these things all the time, in the nets and in games, they are all looking for something that will help the ball play up. When they are using a ball they are unfamiliar with, they get the new ball to practice these methods with it.

And this isn’t some new thing that has come in with professionalism, players used to try putting brylcreem and other things on the balls years ago.

Then there is raising the seam, and oldy but a goody, finger nails are a favourite, teeth are less popular.

All the time the cricketers will be trying to come up with new ways to make the ball sing.

We wont know them until the camera gets them or until the ghost written autobiography comes out.

Some of them are so genius that the camera can’t pick them up.

Ball tampering is a skill like any other; just one you don’t want to own up about or get caught doing.

Subtlety is the key, not something Afridi has ever been guilty of.

I would never usually get up before 10 for limited overs, I’m not an animal.

This time I’m glad I did.

Not only did I hear James Brayshaw, aka JB, call Dirk, Dirty Dirk, I also saw Dirk bowl the senond last over for 2 runs and take a wicket.

I think that gave me an emotional orgasm.

I was pushing the Dirk bandwagon when there was no bandwagon, so to see him today, hirsute and magnificent, was almost too much to handle.

This bearded man is a marvel, and were it physically possible I would offer to have his babies.

Even in his interview he made me proud, while Healy was asking his usual sports science questions, Dirk just said I just bowled short and then at the stumps.

This is our cricket Renaissance man, and to see him finally end up where he belongs makes me so very fucken happy.

Well played my friend, well played.

Taking our jobs.

Taking up our bandwidth.

Breathing our air.

Marrying our women.

Taking our blogs.

And, now, threatening to take our awards as well.

I didn’t even know that there was a category for ‘Greatest Number of Expletives Per Column Inch’, or ‘Most Gratuitous Mention of Bryce McGain in an Article’, but apparently Jrod has been nominated for some kind of award by the National Sporting Club. Which makes the rest of the socially inept munchkins who inhabit this place very proud of him indeed. Especially as it is for Best New Writer at the British Sports Book Awards.

Of course, when the old buffers who nominated him realise that (a) being a Victorian doesn’t mean you are over 100 and (b) he doesn’t own a suit, let alone a tie, he’s toast. But we’re very happy for him and hope that this might actually push sales of The Book into double figures.

Finding a publisher is pretty cool.

Selling more than 12 copies is cool as fuck.

Getting nominated for best new sports writer by the British National Sporting Club is kinda fucked up.

But, I did.

I am not sure how, or why, but for some reason the mainstream is letting me sleep in the pornographic cupboard they pretend they don’t have in the guest house.

My book won’t win, you can’t make jokes about killing Richie Benaud and win, but, as they say in the cliches, it is nice to be nominated.

Weird but nice.

Unfortunately my book is not nominated in the same category as Stuart Broad’s book, best illustrated ( I didn’t even know Broad was a photographer).

Also, and you should chuckle a little about this, somehow I was not nominated for best publicity campaign.

If by some chance I do win, I promise to snob every one of you in my acceptance speech, but i will quote something from a film or song that has no relevance to the award at hand.

If one of you hasn’t bought the book already, go get your hands on this award nominated piece of ass.

I’m involved in the round table discussion where I call someone a retarded space monkey, compare another players brain to a potato and say they Aleem Dar smiles when he plays ping pong.

There is also an interview with IOB, and heaps of other stuff.

Go to their site and check it out.

Bowling average of 22 in his career.

3^rd leading wicket taker in shield cricket this year.

Can legitimately claim he is from NSWales.

Built like Jesse Ventura’s brick shithouse.

Is called the duke.

He is no Steven Seagal, but other than that what’s not to like?

Where is the hype though? Do I have to everything myself.

Surely Hastings has done enough this year to get a few people singing from his hymn sheet.

I saw him play a couple of 2020 games a few years back and I thought he looked like a player, I didn’t really expect a season like this.

So I am starting the hype, the boy can play, his stats are pretty, and if he keeps taking wickets he should be pressing for a spot in some team in the future.

Although he still couldn’t get Smooth Eddie Cowan out, but few can, as he is still the leading shield run scorer of the year.