cricket with balls

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.

Prince Brendon may have started last years IPL with a full frontal assualt on the crowd, but this year the old dudes and an untouchable dog started us off.

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.

No more straight ones, no more forehead wiping, and no more Anil.

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.

I need you.

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

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Young men are vibrant.

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.