Nine live: cricket's TV blackouts face the axe
(Sydney Morning Herald, 29.4.05)

The SMH is reporting today that the antiquated home city Test TV blackout of the first two sessions of the day might be canned, if Cricket Australia signs up with Channel 9 for another seven years of covering Australian cricket.

The middle man and The reincarnation of Merv Hughes
(Lawrence Booth/The Guardian, 26.4.05)

There was a time when The Spin looked suspiciously like a running sheet of the previous week's new items on my website! But it's much better than that, and indeed one of the few decent cricket columns in the established media on the net that I enjoy reading these days.

First Word: Gutless display of cricket
(Ezra Stuart/Daily Nation Barbados, 25.4.05)

"Depressing, deplorable and a downright disappointing display of Test cricket. Sorry, toothless tiddly-thumbs stuff. It was a massive letdown for followers of Caribbean cricket." Don't hold back Ezra!

What's going on, guys?

I can cope with a draw against Sussex in the County Championship - at least Surrey came out of that game with more points than their opponents. And I can barely cope with the loss of a National League Division Two game on steroids against Yorkshire by the margin of 334 to 291. (Ali Brown 89 from 46 balls, you are still a legend.)

Indian selection system outdated: Wright
(IANS via Times of India, 24.4.05)

The outgoing Indian team coach suggests that the world's wealthiest cricket board should - gasp - pay its national selectors!

Lording it at the home of cricket
(Paul Doyle/The Guardian, 22.4.05)

A sports columnist who seems to have recently joined The Guardian from somewhere outside the UK, Paul Doyle went to his first game of cricket on Thursday - Middlesex v Notts at Lord's, to be precise. Which makes his naive observations of county cricket all the more amusing.

Cricket hotel hits rare thrasher for six
(BirdLife International, 22.4.05)

Blame the 2007 CWC. A hotel development in St Lucia, which will host Group 3 of the first stage of the 2007 tournament (New Zealand, England, Kenya and a qualifier) could, according to an Environmental Impact Assessment, wipe out a quarter of the world's population of the White-breasted thrasher.

"I've been fascinated by your five-year plan for the last fifteen years"
- Melvyn Douglas to Greta Garbo, Ninotchka (1939)

Cricket's home moves closer to the money
(Raja M/Asia Times, 22.4.05)

"The ICC cannot afford to pay 30% tax..."
- Inderjit Singh Bindra

Why the ICC moved to a tax haven, in the words of the man who wants to get the BCCI listed on the Indian stock market.

A remarkable story that I was unaware of until today. April 22, 1959, and the acclaimed ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn is detained in a Panama City lock-up for 24 hours while her husband is on the run attempting a coup against the Panamanian government.

BBC Online's On This Day section picks up the story.