Sorry folks, but as you can tell, the plethora of one day series do not keep my attention as well as the longer form of the game and hence updates have been a bit more sparse than I would have hoped.

In the intervening period Pakistan have come back into world cricket much as they left it – absolutely brilliant one day, complete nonsense the next. Having dismantled Sri Lanka by eight wickets on Tuesday, with Salman Butt making a century in pursuit of Sri Lanka’s inadequate total, they were beaten by 129 runs yesterday as Sri Lanka’s spin twins took three wickets each. The series decider on Saturday is in Lahore.

In a lower profile series Bangladesh levelled the score against Zimbabwe. The visitors made 160 on the Mirpur batting paradise, which the hosts tracked down with five overs to spare. Their great batting hope, Raqibul Hassan, guided them home with an unbeaten 52, which judging by the scores on that piece of mud, is probably equivalent to a ton on a Karachi road.

I actually don’t care when that decider is, but I’m sure it is soon (it is tonight). But on a lighter note, just to show that the ICC rankings are for muppets, look at this story…. rather him than Flintoff, Vettori, Kallis, Oram, hell, even Symonds….

Australia play their third game of the series against South Africa tomorrow at the SCG. Mitchell Johnson comes back for the home team and Ben Hilfenhaus will be dropped. I’ll report back on that over the weekend.

England have arrived in St. Kitts ahead of their test series against the West Indies. A match against a St Kitts XI has been lined up for 25 January. How the intensity of those tours has changed over the years. I remember 23 years ago, England going out to the West Indies with a little bit of confidence on the back of series wins against India away, and Australia at home. This was our first game of that 1986-7 series. It didn’t get much better after that.

Even in the early 90s, when the team started to wane, players of this ilk could not get a place in the test team. This piece is spectacular…

“Why though, is he known as the Dentist? “It’s a funny old story,” he grins. “I was playing for Nevis against Antigua many years ago, and there was this bloke playing for Antigua called Zorah Barthley, who was the West Indies youth team captain. Nevis had never beaten Antigua outright in Antigua, but that afternoon, we took the new ball and he was playing really late. And I thought to myself, if he’s playing late now I’ve got to rough him up early in the morning.

“First thing in the morning he nicks one but the umps didn’t send him on his way, and that wound me up a bit. And so the next ball was four yards quicker than anything I’ve ever bowled. He shaped to hook, and his teeth went flying all over the place, and it was a funny old sight. But he was the man who made the Dentist really. I couldn’t have done it without him.”

What a charmer!

Back to that 1985-6 tour, and the second game of that adventure saw England looking like a test team until asked to chase 116 to win…

I’ll come back to some of my childhood cricket memories in the fullness of time. This blog gives me great scope to do so.