It may only be a University game but this is still pretty special - 27 days into his 16th year Barney Gibson has become the youngest County cricketer ever, breaking a record that has stood for 144 years, by playing for Yorkshire against Durham University.
While the World Cup was on I read Behind the Shades
- the autobiography of the new Indian coach Duncan Fletcher. A few things stood out. The first was the fact that Fletcher can't agree to disagree....he holds grudges and the whole book is an exercise in score-settling. The second is that he holds Gary Kirsten in extremely high regard and they clearly have a good relationship (the book was written before Kirsten got the India job). The third is that he makes it clear the (negative) impact the England job had on his family. And the fourth is that he's ambitious and the book demonstrates that he's been successful in all his coaching roles and wants to continue to challenge himself. 
Sorting out the Steyning sides last night was a very strange experience. I'm used to discussing potential names that could be approached in a desperate attempt to fill out the bottom side, knowing that 9 is the minimum needed to get a side out. Once you have 9 the game can go ahead, and there's always the chance of finding someone from a pub, club etc (I remember getting my 11th for a Sunday match in a London night club about a decade ago).
I was amazed when I got The Spin yesterday and read about Bilal Shafayat, aged 26 and apparently on the County Cricket scrapheap, or the 1st XI scrapheap anyway. A teenage prodigy, I assumed that the very least Shafayat would make of his cricketing career was to be a regular County pro. I realised he was struggling to make the impression his talent suggested he should (I've now seen he has a first-class average of 30), but it didn't occur to me he might find it difficult to find a County.
I know, I know, I'm a little behind. But hopefully I'll catch up over the next 48 hours. This piece in The Guardian about Duckworth-Lewis weekend before last completely changed my opinion of them - they insisted on meeting over a "pub lunch in semi-rural Oxfordshire"! I wonder if it's a pub known to Thames Tourists...
Off to spend a week in Dartmouth so do all the checking on the internet - pubs, pub quizzes, places to visit etc. Then you think 'wonder if I can watch some cricket?' Extraordinary - Dartmouth, population 5,512 has no cricket club! Having been raised in the rus and suburbs of the home counties it never occurred to me that such a prominent town wouldn't or couldn't have a cricket club.
Apologies for the low levels of Burbling lately - been pretty busy but I'll try to Burbletastic next week! In the mean time, have you seen that The Cricketer has a new look site now that the Wisden Cricketer magazine is overseen by the likes of Jonathan Agnew and CMJ? Alternatively you can read about Adil Rashid getting worse and Ben Stokes getting better at King Cricket. Or Reverse Sweep's piece about how we should look out for 17-year old Reece Topley following his wicket-taking antics for Essex. Happy cricket reading....
Shane Watson: 185 not out from 96 balls. Tendulkar's 200 was truly amazing, but had Australia been batting first, just imagine what Watson might have ended up with!!
Well OK, I'm sure it's been done before outside of first class cricket, but this was the first time in first class cricket. Soon to be New Zealander, Neil Wagner, was the lucky man who took 4 wickets in a row before a bad ball wrecked his over(!), and then he bounced back with another wicket. With a first class average of 22 with the ball, South African-born Wagner looks like he might be taking the field for New Zealand when he qualifies for them next year.
Apparently, it's all become too much and Martin Crowe has resigned from the Cricket Committee in New Zealand because of a conflict of interests. He wants Ross Taylor to be named captain now but others aren't so sure. That's not a conflict of interest, that's a disagreement on policy. He's resigned in a huff because he hasn't got his way. If Taylor really is his mate, then Crowe might want to consider whether he's helping his mate by being so open about his stance on the captaincy, or if he just fancies a few headlines for himself.
It seems that for MS Dhoni, the answer was to cut his hair. Here's a photo of him just after the final. And here's a photo of Dhoni the next day holding his man-of-the-match award and the World Cup. Clearly he's not a drinker (and he's said as much). But his countrymen are as alcohol sales have jumped with India's success....
Oh dear. No stranger to controversy, Shahid Afridi spoiled what was a good World Cup campaign that led to his team being received by the Pakistani PM (the PM being castigated by some for the cost to the tax-payer of the reception), by suggesting that "Indian's will never have hearts like Muslims and Pakistanis. I don't think they have the clean and large hearts that Allah has given us." Sigh. No further comment required really, but this article tries to make sense of the way religion is sometimes aligned with cricket in Asia.
Michael Clarke began his tenure as Australian captain today in a friendly in Bangladesh yesterday and made a run a ball half century before retiring. I think his batting form is going to be critical - from his matches captaining Australia when Ponting was either injured or rested, he appears to be tactically superior, but his form seems to dip in and out and a significant bad run at the start of his captaincy could cause the Australian selectors problems. Should Clarke have problems with the captaincy, his vice-captain is Shane Watson, and you know my thoughts on Watson as a potential captain! 
There's some tough selections when trying to work out the team of the tournament, but I've ended up going for a team with 9 of the 11 coming from the semi-finalists.
Congratulations to India who managed to take all that pressure on them and still put in a good performance in the final. And particularly to Dhoni who captained well throughout the tournament and stepped up with his batting when required. His decision to move to 5 above Yuvraj in the final - apparently made on the basis that Sri Lanka picked two (or three if you include Dilshan) off-spinners who would be more dangerous to left-handers, was inspired as it turned out. 
Amazing team selections from both teams, but particularly Sri Lanka. Sreesanth playing ahead of Ashwin is a surprise but far less than Sri Lanka leaving out both Herath and Mendis. I know there is a school of thought that India read Mendis easily but Mendis has been in great form and I can't believe they didn't back him to get the better of the Indian batsmen.
No, not to make it a fairy tale with Tendular scoring his hundredth hundred and winning the World Cup on home soil. In case you've missed it, 20 year-old Indian model Poonam Pandey has been making headlines in India after promising to go nude if India win the World Cup. All publicity is good publicity perhaps, but there are areas of India that are chronically conservative, so I'm not sure it was that sensible in career terms.
With Angelo Mathews out it tips the World Cup final slightly in India's favour so I'd love to see Sri Lanka win the toss and bat first. The toss could be a vital contributor to the final result and if India win it and score 300+, life could get tough for Sri Lanka. It remains to be seen who will replace Mathews and whoever they pick their batting is much weakened....I think I'd go for Kulasekara who has a good recent record against India's much vaunted batted line up.