Oops.

OKay, we apologise. We will no longer be calling them the "Slack Caps". We don't know where they pulled their current performance from, but it's awesome.

We're still calling ol' Jesse an idiot though, for breaking his bat when he got out. That would have been an expensive bat. Even if he didn't pay for it.

Things that amuse me. (aside from the phrase "cheese on a stick")

1. The Blues. Man, they suck. They got beat something like a zillion to half a zillion by the Chiefs. The game was a bit pants, but good in a watching-on-prime-on-sunday-avo kind of way.

2. Team Kiwi. Not just cos theyre racing V8's. But cos theyre doing it in a hire car.

3. The Warriors. What's this winning all about then? And has Stacey Jones actually aged at all in the time he's been away from the game, or has he found the same fountain of youth that the Briscoes lady has been drinking from?

4. The Slack Caps. They suck worse than the Blues. And Iain O'Brien seems to have fallen off the curry wagon. (seriously, thats all he seems to eat. Maybe he's pandering to the eleventy billion Indian commenters that seem to have shown up on his blog.)

5. Bernie Ecclestone. No Bern, no one likes your "winner take all" competition format. Not even your mum.

5. The Red Bull f1 teams and their current game of "collect the Sebastien's" Of their four drivers, three are named Seb.

6. The Cheetahs. Whom I even let get out of Dunedin without stalking them. Arent we all proud?

A rose by any other name...

So, now is the time we can start wheeling out all the old names for the black caps. And what time is this, you ask? 51 for 5, thats what the time is.

So, whats it to be? The Slack Caps? The Black Cats? The Door Mats?

On the other hand, Yay, Chris Martin is back! We missed him, at least we know he cant bat.

And, because no one else seems to care... Well Done White Ferns! Theyre a shoe-in for the World Cup final, beating the Indian women in the semi's.

Like fruit salad, here's some of everything.

First of all, my thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who was affected by the terror attacks in Lahore a few hours ago. It is reassuring to hear that the players are all out safely.

Okay, I'm back.

I have a room with no furniture, and it appears I also can has autumn. I miss summer already. The Cheap Seats have a hub, but no bar, thanks to the demise of the grand and glorious Bowler (Which Madame and I sent off in style...)

The twenty20's have been rife, with the Black caps making up for the utter fail of their run chase in Sydney by stuttering their way to two victories.
Brendon McCullum was amazing, despite not going for the gigantic fucking slog everyone seemed to think he had to carry out. Instead he, gasp, steered both our inning's in a fashion that was both entertaining and intelligent. If he keeps that up I might have to stop considering twenty20 the red-haired stepchild of real cricket.

Now, it should be noted that these games were played in February, which is still (though not in Dunedin) late summer. On the first day of Autumn there was another twenty20 game. Madame Backslash has already discussed the rain which ruined that one. The efforts of the ground staff were herculean, the Canterbury boys stealing Aaron Redmond's rugby ball was highlarious but watching Otago win by default... Uninspiring.

And just to top it off for the first ODI it is raining. In Napier. Napier is the place I gave myself first degree sunburns. It never rains in Napier. At least not in summer.

Although as I wrote this post I got to watch a replay of the game that I gave myself such horrible sunburn at, last time India played in Napier. I even wrote about it in my diary. The entry was emo, but that game was a good one.

And now for another episode of, The More You Know... *cue theme music*

They actually played CricketMAX internationals! (for those of you who don't know, if twenty20 is the red-haired stepchild of real cricket, then cricketMAX was the partial-birth abortion. It was like a forty over test match, one side batted ten overs, then the other, then the first side again, and the second. There was also the opportunity to get extra runs by hitting the ball into certain areas of the ground. It was terrible, and also entirely Martin Crowe's fault.) But apparently they played six international cricketMAX games, the last of which was NZ vs India in 2002. I got to watch the replay, and it was just as awful as I remember.
Note - 20 year old Brendon McCullum did in that game exactly what he did in the recent twenty20's. The boy has always been a class act.

As a nice slide from cricket to rugby, the Otago Highlanders came to play cricket against some students at Otago Uni today. They were good at batting, good at bowling but shit at catching. Which may go some way to explaining their current position on the Super 14 ladder. Jimmy Cowan especially seemed afraid of the ball. Which was yellow. And plastic.

Actually, given how bad the kiwi teams have been performing I don't think I'll talk about rugby, except to say that the Highlanders playing against the Crusaders as the warm up act for Shihad is O for Oarsome.
Oh, and big ups to the Hurricanes for beating the Crusaders. I'm going to be rubbing it in to Madame backslash for, oh, at least the next six months.

Wow... Long update is long.

Woe!

The Sri Lankan cricket team, which is currently touring Pakistan, was attacked on their way to the test in Lahore.  At time of writing, eight players are listed as injured (two seriously) and five Pakistani police officers are dead.  The rest of the tour has been cancelled.

To the perpetrators, I'd just like to say WTF, people??!?  Whatever you're pissed off with the Sri Lankan government about (if anything), it's pretty unlikely the cricket team had anything to do with it.  And even so, what the hell is wrong with placards, a strongly-worded letter to the Editor or, if you're really riled, chaining yourself to something?

The Cheap Seats is appalled by these events, and wish a swift, safe recovery to the injured players and condolences to the families of the officers who died in the line of duty.

Let's have no more of this, eh?

Weather 1, Twenty20 0

So the Brat, the Weasel and I duly trundled off to the University Oval for the Twenty20 match, staking out our claim in the "family" (ie "munter-free") section of the ground.  Where we sat and drank beer (out of cans, blech) (except for the Weasel, who is underage, who had fizzy drink instead), ate chips and watched as they brought in a helicopter (aka "giant fan") to dry out the pitch and outfield.

Pitch duly dried and giant fan flown away... it started to drizzle.  And the drizzle got heavier and heavier, until it was actual rain.  The drizzle started at 4pm, and the match wasn't actually called off until 5pm, by which time the Weasel and I (who are clearly not as waterproof as the Brat) had bailed and called for extraction.

So it was an interesting experience, but it would've been nice to actually have, y'know, _seen some cricket_.