Hotspot exposes Bollinger hairline

England didn't even have the luxury of Hotspot in South Africa, but it appears that where it is used, it can help with more than just umpiring decisions.

Players like Shane Warne are well known for their attempts to halt the loss of hair, and now poor old Doug Bollinger seems to have been exposed by Hotspot in his follow through! (Thanks to Steyning's man in Australia Pete Vielvoye for pointing this out).

Bollinger seems to have put in a pretty special performance with the ball taking 4 wickets, leading to another cringe-worthy headline starting "Bollinger explodes..." but sadly for him the Australian public will probably remember his hairline more than his bowling in this game!

India struggling - debutant Saha under pressure

Looking at South Africa closing in on 500 in the first innings of the match against India with 4 wickets down, I checked the Indian team while considering how they might fight back. No Dravid and Laxman was always going to be a problem...I don't rate Yuvraj Singh so highly but he's also missing.

Vijay and Badrinath have come in for the first two slots, but somehow Saha has come into the side too, despite really being the wicket keeping back up for Dhoni. It does seem that India were very unlucky with Sharma injuring himself in the warm up, but I'm not entirely sure why it's not Dinesh Karthik acting as understudy for Dhoni? It was only 2007 when many suggested that Karthik was a better keeper than Dhoni so he's surely India's keeping number 2, and a more seasoned batsman.

Saha is now under immense pressure - if he can handle it then good on him.

The best bowlers and batsmen in Tests and ODIs

Of course this type of analysis is always open to question, but Cricinfo have had a go at working out who the best batsman and bowler is when you take into account Tests and ODIs.

The best batsman? Sachin Tendulkar.
The best bowler? Muttiah Muralitharan.

Tait falls short of record but still 3rd quickest

Interesting to see some of Shaun "Wild man" Tait's comments after he bowled 160.7km/hour with his third ball in Australia's exciting Twenty20 win over Pakistan. That delivery made him the 3rd fastest bowler of all time (since speeds were recorded) behind Shoaib Akhtar, who holds the record at 161.3km/hour and Brett Lee.

“There’s only certain moments when you’re bowling in your career when you’ve got a chance to do it. I was saying to the boys before you’ve probably got only two balls in a game – tonight it was my third ball – and I had a crack the next ball after that just to have a go, but after that it’s hard to get up to that pace.”

Nice to see his mind was on winning the game then!

Extra match on Ashes tour

When you see a headline saying there's an extra match on an Ashes tour you expect that to mean 6 Tests don't you? I got all excited, only to find there's another warm up game....probably 12 aside judging by recent England warm up games.

A 6th Test would be better....

Athers agrees

Anybody who's been listening to me will know that I reckon all this fuss about near neighbour John Terry is pure flannel and now the mighty Athers has made the same point in today's Times -'what does a football captain actually do?'. He's got virtually no decision to make beyond 'heads' or 'tails' and 'where shall we go paintballing next?'

New car report

I hadn't realised until my employers recently told me to get a new car (lucky me!) how few modern cars there are that have long wave radio. And obviously you need long wave to get TMS (or DAB but my experience anywhere away from London on that is that it's still pretty ropey). So you make a choice from a list limited by that and then find that my new Renault has a special socket near the drivers seat that is exactly the right size to store a cricket ball. Who says that the French don't understand the import at things in life?

Strange goings on in Oz for Pakistan

Even stranger than the loss from a seemingly impregnable position in the 2nd Test v Australia, was Pakistan's day yesterday where they lost by 2 wickets in the final ODI.

First Khalid Latif was rugby tackled by a spectator, and then Shahid Afridi took a bite out of the ball in a desperate attempt to get some movement as Australia closed in on victory! It's not the first lunatic piece of behaviour from Afridi - many England supporters will remember his 360 degree swivel on a length when there was a bomb scare during one of England's 2005 Tests in Pakistan. Given that it's not his first offence, he's got to be very satisfied with only a two Twenty20 match ban.

Just to add to their woes, the chief selector has resigned too, off the back of whitewash in Australia's favour in the Test and ODI series. And that comes 6 months after Abdul Qadir resigned as Chief Selector, who himself was only in the job 6 months. Pakistan cricket makes the Moores/Pietersen affair look like a trivial reshuffling of the pack! Given that they also had another Chief Selector resign in October 2008, they may do well to look at changes that need to be made at PCB level to avoid this continuing - they are now looking for their 5th Chief Selector since the 2007 World Cup!!

Neil McKenzie joins Hampshire

My take is that Neil McKenzie is a brilliant signing - possibly the best of Hampshire's signings that include Kabir Ali, Simon Jones, Shahid Afridi and Ajantha Mendis. McKenzie will play the whole season (assuming South Africa don't have a change of heart) and - while it's difficult to know from the outside - my perception is that he's a really hard grafter and Hampshire need that grit to go alongside their big name stars - especially in the 4-day game. Not that McKenzie is exactly a little name - he just won't attract quite the attention of some of the others.

I reserve the right to retract the above if he averages 10 half way through the season!! It will be very interesting to see how Dimi Mascarenhas does trying to handle his team of highly paid stars....I was quite keen on giving him the England Twenty20 captaincy when Paul Collingwood originally resigned in 2008 but this will be a real test for him....

Afridi Pakistan's only hope

Pakistan desperately need something special from Afridi and he's certainly started well - 4,4,2,6,6. 22 off 5 balls - not bad. I hope for the spectators sake he can keep going!

Dravid is human...

Rahul Dravid was brought down to earth yesterday having drawn level with Don Bradman on 29 centuries, as the second new ball proved troublesome. A ball from Shahadat Hossain broke his cheekbone or jaw (depending on which report you read!)and Dravid is now in doubt for the February South Africa series. That's huge, as India will be wanting to prove that they are the number 1 Test side in the world.

And of course in the same game, Tendulkar reached 90 international hundreds - an even 45 in Tests and 45 in ODIs. Now that's pretty special and there's no doubt that India's first choice top 7 is one of the best ever, if not the best ever.

Broad, Swann and Anderson - a quality tail

I recently wrote about how England should be able to feel comfortable with their batting line up given that they're playing 7 batsmen and 2 allrounders. Of course they were soon bowled out twice for less than 200!

But Cricinfo's numbers game has presented the stats the demonstrate just how strong England's tail has become, especially compared to their recent history. On top of 9 batsmen or allrounders, Anderson has averaged nearly 17 since the start of 2008, and Onions averages 32 balls for each of his dismissals. (When Sidebottom came in for the 4th Test v South Africa, I somehow didn't feel comfortable with Anderson losing his number 10 spot and now there's some statistical justification for that - that average of nearly 17 in the last 2 years is superior to Sidebottom's career batting average).