The Dobber 05 April 2013

The Dobber is a bi-weekly ramble around the cricket world`s boundary. Email ririvine@nzcricket.org.nz with your suggestions / contributions / corrections etc.

The Beige Brigade`s Paul Ford on Jesse Ryder:

Jesse has found himself a cult hero in the New Zealand game, alongside blokes like Chris Martin (batting prowess), Lance Cairns (sixes at the MCG), Rodney Redmond (100 and benched), Brian McKechnie (underarm forward defensive and bat hurl), Ewen Chatfield (metronomic length and a moustache) and Chris Cairns (tonking sixes and being his father's son). Even Mark Richardson used to be one as he pitted his three shots against the world's best bowlers and came out on top a ridiculously high percentage of the time.

Queenstown and Pukekura Park feature in The Guardian`s list of most beautiful grounds. 

Pukekura Park is the most beautiful cricket ground I have seen. I watched an England XI play a Shell XI there in February, 1988. The ground is surrounded by exotic plants from the botanical garden, there is a lake and the whole idyll is presided over by an almost perfectly conical volcano. Absolutely stunning.

The Old Batsmen picks up on nine throwaway words from the permanently pursed lips of Steve Waugh, and extrapolates a potential doomsday scenario. I`m just heartened to see I`m not the only one Steve Waugh still terrifies, frankly.   

It's a perfect piece of Steve Waugh theatre, brilliant in its understatement. It's no blithe McGrath prediction, not a lengthy piece of pre-series hype. Instead it's subtly undermining, it's suggestive, and it's also realistic.

The Wasted Afternoons misses the days when players would learn of the birth of their children via the scoreboard.

Subash Jayaraman submitted this photo,'Billy the Hero', for which Cricket Peru won the ICC Global Photo of the Year.

The Guardian finds room for two cricketers in their list of six cool sports stars. Surprised Chris Harris doesn`t feature in fairness. 

[Viv Richards] "The wicket falls, but he allowed things to settle," wrote Mike Selvey in the Guardian. "Waiting for the arena to clear, the celebrations (more muted in those days) to die down. The theatre lights dimmed and expectation became electricity. Everyone knew who was coming. And when he finally made his entrance, swaggering down the steps, cudding his gum, and windmilling his bat gently, first one arm then the other … I put on a performance, he told me, it was part of my act …