NEWS FLASH!!!!

Yesterday, I was (as usual) hunched over my keyboard after lunch, going through cricinfo.com, getting my update on the Sri Lanka-South Africa Test Match in Colombo (the match eventually went down to the wire thanks to a masterclass of an innings from Mahela Jayawardene, and a crazy, stupid, inane, unnecessary, mindless, imbecilic slog from no. 10 Murali)

In the mean time, the hyperlink under the section on England v Pakistan at Headingley went from 'Scorecard' to 'Live Scorecard'. Pakistan needed to get 323 to win and square the series at 1-1, and they were to begin their innings on the final morning. And then I got the proverbial sock between the eyes.

If you're familiar with the live scorecard page on Cricinfo, then you know that the names of the 2 batsmen are at the top, followed, by the names of the two bowlers. There, very innocuously, innocently, was displayed:

Salman Butt 0* (8b) MS Panesar 1-0-1-0
Taufeeq Umar 1* (4b) MJ Hoggard 1-1-0-0

This isn't the same thing (I pinched it from the site later), but fellows, this has to be a landmark moment in modern English cricket. An English spinner sharing the new ball in a test match being played in England against a side whose batsmen are considered seasoned agaisnt spin. No matter what Andrew Strauss does in his career hereon, I will always love him. The days of the defensive, ugly, dispensable, batsman-posing-as-spinner England spinners are surely behind us now!

But Strauss then proceeded to break my heart by installing the old firm of Hoggard and Harmison from the 3rd over onwards. Sigh! And to think, I went and switched on the TV to watch my first ball of live cricket in 3 weeks, just to see Monty bowl with the bright red cherry. But it wasn't to be.

That's life: When you have a Kodak moment, you generally don't have a bloody camera.