David Armand Again - he is a genius!

Bryan Carrasco - cynical challenge!

India v England

What a great advert for cricket this game was. It went from India stuffing England, to England keeping themselves in ti, to India should be winning to a tie.

You can't ask for more from one game of cricket, and this has restored my faith in the 50 over game!

England won't win the competition, but at least with this result they've made a decent fist of things.

Ireland will probably stuff them now!

Punter Run Out

You've got to feel sorry for Ricky:



Or maybe not!

New Lutters' World Cup Lines

Read my take on England's opening game at the cricket World Cup.

Click here!

The fine line between success and failure in sport

Jason Puncheon, on loan to Blackpool and playing in the Premier League on a weekly basis at the moment played at Lewes in the Conference South just 4 years ago. So what has changed in that time? I imagine not a lot. He may have knuckled down and matured as a player, but surely this can’t have improved his game by 5 divisions to enable him to play in what has been described as “the best league in the world”.

He’s not the only one either. Take Jermaine Beckford, Everton’s summer capture from Leeds United. He was plying his trade at Ryman League Wealdstone 5 years ago, scoring 35 goals in 40 games, although he didn’t stand out particularly when we played him at Worthing.

DJ Campbell is a another one, seemingly rejected by the professional game, in 2005 was playing at Ryman League Yeading, who had a decent FA Cup run and all of a sudden league clubs are scrambling all over each other for his signature, a race that Brentford won. He did stand out when we played him, and his stats of 65 goals in 88 games for Yeading can’t be argued with. He always scored when I marked him for Worthing, as I remind everyone when he’s on TV.

So what changed? One season they are regarded as not being good enough, and the next they are hot property. It’s funny how quickly things change in sport. You just have to be seen by a manager who likes the look of you and your luck can change immeasurably. It’s the same with managers, with Roy Hodgson recently being given the West Bromwich Albion job when he was an apparent disaster at Liverpool only a month previously.

Sport is fickle, and the reason it’s so popular is that it divides opinions, which is the reason that all these seemingly weird things happen, like Campbell going from warehouse manager to Premier League footballer in the space of 18 short months. I can only assume that an ambitious lower league player looks forward to when the cameras are at their game so that they have a chance to impress and move up through the leagues. And who can blame them?

It’s a funny old game Saint.

A young Lutters?

Presumably that £50 million for Torres in is a high interest account.

"Brave" Gattuso vs Joe Jordan (aged 59)

The most interesting bit of the game but he ought to remember that Joe Jordan didn't lose his teeth by eating too many sweeties! Although it was a bit like James "Bonecrusher" Smith vs Joe Bugner.



Anyone else thinking "It's my ball and I'm taking it home"?

The Cricket World Cup 2011

The waiting is almost over as the Cricket World Cup is about to get underway. But is there really the anticipation out there that there should be? The tournament is being played in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and goes on for about 2 months, with the prospect of plenty of “dead rubbers”. It is going to be the dullest competition in living memory, which is a real shame because it could be a fantastic spectacle.

So why is it going to be awful? Here are just a few of the reasons:

·           It’s going on for an eternity. There really is no need for a competition to last 2 months, especially as cricket isn’t the most strenuous activity in many opinions. Is anyone going to be bothered to watch all the games? No is the simple answer.

·           The grounds aren’t ready and are essentially sub-standard. Not all of them, obviously, but some games have had to be moved already due to problems with the grounds being ready which ahs infuriated fans who had made travel plans and are now desperately trying to alter them.

·           The pitches are very batsman friendly, so most games are not going to be a contest. Endless overs of medium dob and spin aren’t going to excite anyone.

·           The crowds are going to be pathetic in most cases, unless India, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka are playing in their own country. Although the Indians are reputedly passionate about cricket, they are only really interested in their own team, so Holland and Ireland can expect to be playing in front of empty stands.

The whole debacle is down to a greedy ICC who are trying to eek as much money out of the tournament as possible, cramming outfields with sponsors and getting as much advertising in during games so that they can charge TV companies enormous sums to show the footage. It will backfire in the end, as the sponsors will pull out when they realise nobody can be bothered to watch. The 50 over game is already under threat from Twenty20 cricket and this will only add fuel to the flames about to envelop the game.

I have to admit that I will not be watching, I can’t justify spending that much time watching games I really have no interest in. I imagine I won’t be the only one.

Sledging of the cricketing kind

“Merciless they are, and out of order. There’s no room in the game for that sort of thing.”

The Australians are reputedly the originators of what is commonly known as “sledging” in cricket. If you are unaware, “sledging” is talking to a batsman, with the goal to take their mind off the game and ultimately take their wicket. It can be merciless, in a number of ways, and it can be counterproductive, as different people react in different ways to a verbal battering.

There are three types of sledging in my experience:

1.       Abusive – calling the batter every name under the sun, insulting their family, and generally being unpleasant. Not intelligent, or likely to win you too many friends.

2.       Factual – this can be very amusing if you’re not on the end of it. This generally entails picking out a few choice facts about a batter’s current form. There’s a great clip of Mark Boucher asking then Zimbabwean skipper Tatenda Taibu about his batting average, which was between 9 and 10 – “What is it, about 9.5? I’ll tell you what, we’ll round it up to 10 for you”.

3.       Amusing – this can be funny for all parties, if they are in the right mood. There’s a famous incident where Shane Warne tells South African batsman Daryll Cullinan that he’s been looking forward to bowling at him for about 2 years (Warne got Cullinan out rather a lot in the previous series), and the batsman retorted with “It looks like you spent most of it eating”. Even though it may seem a bit harsh to comment on the great spinner’s weight, it is a great comeback.

When done in a friendly, banter-based way, sledging most certainly has a place in the game of cricket. The game is not the quickest and offers players plenty of time for reflection. A cricketer’s success is 50% talent and 50% psychological. There’s nothing much you can do about the talent, but the psychological state of a player could be a weakness if played correctly.

There are some people however where sledging works the opposite way in which it was intended by the fielding side. England batsman Kevin Pietersen is renowned for reacting in a positive way to sledging by getting more runs than he might otherwise have accrued.

The factual sledging is part and parcel of the game and can be avoided by simply getting some runs, so in a sense, you only have yourself to blame if you are sledged on the basis of your recent performances.

What needs to be stamped out, but is almost impossible to police, is the abusive type. This is not big or clever and no-one really enjoys it, even the perpetrator. Cricket is supposed to be a game for intelligent people, and the ability to recall as many insults as possible could be regarded as sub-intelligent.

In general then, long live sledging. It’s funny on the whole and makes the time pass far quicker and more enjoyably.

More Miming!

Like Stieg Larsson? Try Jo Nesbo

I really enjoyed the Stieg Larsson books - gripping stuff, couldn't put them down etc. The films are pretty good too. But there aren't going to be anymore. I read a review in The Sunday Times "Culture" section about another Scandanavian writer who was very like Larsson. His name: Jo Nesbo.

Fantastic! His series about detective Harry Hole (an alcoholic sociopath) is great. Although the first third of the first book is a little chewy, once you're through that it's terrific from then on in! It is worth reading them in order I hasten to add:

The Redbreast
Nemesis
The Devil Star
The Redeemer
The Snowman
The Leopard



Dark and a real page turner - I'd recommend them to anyone!

And they are dead cheap on Amazon too...

What Happened Next?

Lutters' World Cup Lines - Part 1

Click Here!

Pakistan's "Corrupt" Cricketers

Finally, after almost 6 months, the ICC has judged the 3 Pakistan cricketers at the centre of the spot-fixing scandal guilty and handed out what has been described as “lengthy bans” to all three. Salman Butt (26), Mohammad Asif (28) and Mohammad Amir (18) were all guilty of corruption and given 10 years (5 suspended), 7 years (2 suspended) and 5 years ban from the game respectively.

At least we’ve finally got a response from the ICC, who have dragged their heels on this matter hugely, and arguably have not gone far enough in punishing these three. Rumours were that Butt and Asif were facing lifetime bans, whereas Amir would get a reduced sentence on account of his age and therefore being impressionable. British police have also announced that they are charging the three players with corruption along with a London-based agent Mazhar Majeed.

The whole episode has seen the sport of cricket undoubtedly tainted as it was clear to anyone who’s seen the footage that Amir no-balls were frankly ridiculous, although Amir’s no-ball was close I seem to remember was his first in any form of first-class cricket. Coupled with the fact that Majeed had announced the very balls upon which the bowlers would overstep to the News of the World (arguably the one thing the paper has positively contributed to sport in general), surely their pleas of innocence would seem futile at best, and should, as they do in law, lead to longer sentences.

The fact that the three men pleaded “not guilty” only goes to show that they are essentially pathological liars, prepared to do what they can to get what they want, no matter what or who they trample over in the process.

In case you were wondering, Butt was the captain and set the whole deal up. As captain he made sure that the bowlers were actually bowling at the correct time.

It is fairly typical of the ICC to be lenient, or one could say, toothless. All three will be free to resume their careers in the five years (assuming that they don’t get off on appeal, which presumably all three will do), and only Asif’s career will be as-good-as over, as at 33 his pace will be dropping, not that pace has ever really been his weapon of choice. Butt and Amir will have years ahead of them in which to make money out of a game they have shown zero respect for. Asif has been in trouble before for performance enhancing substances where he has been banned by ICC only to have the charges dropped by the PCB on appeal – odd that the Pakistan Cricket Board overturn their best bowler’s ban don’t you think?

Asif and Butt should have been given life bans, and Amir 10 years. I can’t see these sentences putting too many people off, considering that the financial rewards for spot fixing can be enormous. Maybe the British legal system might dole out a punishment that really will put professional sportsmen off going down the same road. We’ll see as it will take a reasonably long time to get to court I imagine.

Who do Premiership footballers think they are?

Football is the people’s game, entertainment for the working man, a chance for the average Brit to let his or her hair down. But is it really?

The price of a season ticket in the Premier League ranges from £224 (Blackburn’s cheapest available) to £1825 (Arsenal’s most expensive). Although Blackburn’s ticket price is actually quite reasonable (about £12 per home league game), and there is probably a league cup ticket thrown in for good measure, it is their cheapest so you could be sat behind a concrete pillar. Arsenal’s most expensive is a whopping £96 per home league game. One would assume that the view is pretty good, but even so, that’s a lot of money for the average football fan to fork out in one hit. So can the people actually afford to watch their own game? In Blackburn, probably, but in North London it could be a struggle.

And what of their heroes: the players. Wayne Rooney, idolised by many a Manchester United or England fan owns approximately twenty cars, valued at around £1.4 million. As far as automobiles go, one may struggle to argue that young Wayne has remained in touch with his Liverpudlian roots.

The Rooney’s don’t live in a three bed semi-detached either, it’s more a country mansion surrounded with hi-tech burglar alarms and CCTV. Would that be considered “grounded”? Probably not in Croxteth. So are these people really deserved of the hero worship of the public in general?

A story in this weekend’s Sunday Times seemed to suggest that some of these footballers only pay around 2% tax on some of their earnings. When you consider that most of us pay around 30% including National Insurance contributions, then one wonders how these footballing stars sleep at night. It also makes you wonder whether the country would be going through financial hardship if these guys actually paid full whack to HM Revenue & Customs.

Let’s face it, 30% of Rooney’s £250,000 per week (he turned down a reputed £288,000 per week at local rivals Manchester City – the sacrifices one makes) would put something of a dent in the national debt.

He’s not alone. Other players named include Gareth Barry (£100,000 per week), Ashley Cole (£120,000 per week), Rio Ferdinand (£100,000+ per week) and Michael Owen (slumming it on £30,000 per week plus large appearance fees), to name but a few. I suppose on their wages they can afford top accountants to find these loopholes in tax law, but that doesn’t really rid one of the bitter taste.

Football and the money involved has become obscene, and in my view the sport can no longer be considered the people’s game as a result of the gargantuan sums of money sloshing sround. Can you really blame these players though? If someone offers you £250,000 per week, even the most stoic of us would struggle to reply with something along the lines of “Just give me enough to pay the mortgage and reserve me a parking space”, unless the mortgage on your mansion is around £250,000 per week I suppose.

The bubble will burst at some point, and quite a few clubs will struggle financially, even go under. It’s at that point that clubs will find out who their real fans are, and at the same time discover which players really are still men of the people. My bet: very few.