Afghanistan defeated Ireland at the Dubai International Sports Centre on Saturday night to win the final of the 2010 ICC World Twenty20 Qualifying Series. Both have earned a place in the ICC World Twenty20 in the West Indies in a couple of months time, but it's the Afghan rise to the big time that has gathered all the attention.

"QUESTION: ... This is about sports. Afghanistan cricket team defeated American U.S. cricket team in Dubai in the Twenty/20 match. Cricket is not very popular here, but it is very popular in Afghanistan. Any comments on that? People are very happy in Afghanistan about this, defeating a U.S. team in cricket.

MR. CROWLEY: Well, I am not familiar with the result. But certainly we always are good sports, and congratulate the victors."

(This article also appears at The Roar)

One-day cricket has been with us ever since the sun began setting in the evening and players couldn't be bothered coming back the next day to finish the game off.

Chris Monckton is to environmental science what Andre Rieu is to classical music. Both play to packed houses of elderly fans around Australia, both give the genre a bad name. Actually, the comparison is a little unkind to Monsieur Rieu. While Belford Parrott is besotted with both, Viscount Monckton goes well beyond bad into the realm of crackpot.

For a variety of reasons I didn't do a normal cricket blog after Boxing Day 2009. I continued to pass comment on Twitter over the past month, however, and over the past few days I have been summarising, with annotations, my cricket-related tweets between December 27 and the present. Some tweets have been omitted for reasons of clarity or sanity, none have been internally edited.

January 15, 2010:

Pakistani #cricket is going nowhere until the pollies butt out. RT @Cricket365 Pakistan parliament want Alam fired http://bit.ly/81gjw8 10:51 AM Jan 15th

#cricket Congrats to the Northern Territory who won their first Australian Country title yesterday http://tinyurl.com/ybfnfrq 11:04 AM Jan 15th

Part Three of a Twitter-enabled summary of my observations of the cricketing world since Boxing Day 2009. (See also Part One and Part Two.)

January 10, 2010:

Never thought I'd say this, but I miss the #cricket one-day tri-series. 2:56 PM Jan 10th

Dangerous thoughts on a bored Sunday afternoon between Tests with the only televised cricket reserved to an evening hit-and-giggle on pay TV.

Part two of my annotated log of cricketing thoughts as tweeted over the summer holiday period. Some tweets have been deleted for reasons of clarity and sanity.

January 2, 2010:

#cricket I probably won't get around to blogging it, but my cricketer of the 2000s is Muttiah Muralitharan. Runner-up: Adam Gilchrist. 10:13 AM Jan 2nd

#cricket I find it hard to get used to the Sydney Test starting on January 3, not January 2 12:24 PM Jan 2nd

For no obvious reason I haven't done a blog entry about cricket since my end-of-year piece on December 30 (apart from a item spruiking my book "Today In Cricket" and why haven't you bought it yet?). Worse still, my daily Test match entries conked out after the opening day of the Australia v Pakistan First Test.

I can't believe that it more than five years since the last time I blogged about the brilliant Charlie Brooker. Anyway, here is his two-minute primer on news reporting, from his BBC 4 TV show "Newswipe", that has been deservedly doing the rounds on Youtube this week. (Occasional coarse language warning, less than you'd generally expect from Mr Brooker actually)