A round-up

There are quite a number of news stories floating around this morning, so I thought I would lump them all into one posting rather than drip-feeding them to you. First up is actual, you know, cricket with the match between Pakistan and England at Faisalabad threatening to end in a result.

Next up is a list of the best and worst performed players in the fourth innings of a test match. The reason I have included this is not because of the predictable news that Richard Hadlee ranks as one of the best fourth innings' bowlers, but because Chris Cairns surprisingly ranks as the worst. Also of interest is how badly Geoff Howarth performed towards the end of matches, averaging a pitiful 14.27. I am tempted to make a comment about nocturnal activities on the previous four nights of a match leading to that decline, but I am going to restrain myself.

In this piece Henry Olonga offers the ICC another convincing argument why they need to take action on the Zimbabwe issue, an argument which I am sure they will ignore.

Moving onto more local stories, Richard Boock refuses to tell us what Stephen Fleming's "personal medical matter" is and repeats requests to respect Flem's privacy - but does it all in such a way as to provoke more interest rather than deflect it. Just to show Richard that Aucklanders are not the only people who can tease, Jonthan Millmow decides to do the same thing for readers of the Dominion-Post. People in Christchurch don't take kindly to such underhand and provocative behaviour, so the Press simply offers them some nice comments about that nice chap Chris Cairns.

Gavin Larsen is a nice chap too, so he can't help but follow the Press' lead and write his own article on Cairnsy. Larsen does show a little bit of spine though in commenting that he agreed with the initial dropping of Chris.

Okay. There are a few other stories I could bring you, but they are pretty dull and one of them might force me to say nice things about Scott Styris so I think I will stop right here.