da bet7k： Cricinfo runs through the A-Z of 2006

da poker： Andrew Miller03-Jan-2007

The Ashes series was meant to be the highlight of the year, but turned into an Australian cakewalk © Getty Images
A is for Ashes
Or Anticlimax, as it turned out. Sequels invariably suck, and this one wasno exception. The Australian fans turned out in their droves, desperate towitness a re-run of last year’s classic. Instead they witnessed a re-run ofevery other England visit of the past 16 years. But at least they hadvengeance to keep them satisfied.B is for Boot camp
The beginning of the end for England’s Ashes prospects, not that Shane Warnequite saw it that way. “I think it is one of John Buchanan’s wonderful,mastermind things that keeps everyone stumped,” he said, with more than ahint of sarcasm. Warne and his team-mates were packed off, I’m aCelebrity-style, to the Queensland jungle to where they were referred to asnumbers, not names, and made to lug full jerry-cans on 20km hikes. Still, itall paid off in the end, I suppose.C is for Chittagong
The venue for the most flabbergasting performance of the year, bar none. Theonly shame about Jason Gillespie’s astonishing unbeaten Test double-centuryagainst Bangladesh – on his 31st birthday to boot – is that hisworld-beating mullet wasn’t around to share the moment. It had already gotthe chop, as Gillespie himself did immediately after the match. He has sinceembarked on a successful second career as a pub-quiz question.D is for Dad’s Army
He may be England’s unofficial cheerleader, but this was not one of IanBotham’s cleverest jibes. “They are just a bunch of colonial geriatrics,” hetold The News of the World. “I want to hear England saying how goodthey are and how piss poor the Dad’s Army of Aussies are.” Whoops.

If you were burning in 2006 you’d been in the news © AFP
E is for Effigies
The ultimate guide to what’s hot and what’s not. If your image wasn’thoisted onto the shoulders of angry mobs, set alight, and paraded throughthe streets of Lahore, Kolkata or Varanasi, then you simply weren’tnewsworthy enough. Congratulations then to Darrell Hair, Greg Chappell andRicky Ponting, the mob’s men of the year. And a special mention to Damien”The Donkey” Martyn.F is for Flintoff
AKA the Fallen. Poor old Freddie didn’t have a good year. Ankle surgery,poor form, an Ashes hammering to remove the gloss of 2005. Mumbai aside,he discovered – like Ian Botham before him – that the England captaincyisn’t very conducive to allround heroics.G is for Ghosts
… of captains past. Michael Vaughan has been hanging around Australia likethe spectre at the feast, Sourav Ganguly has been embarrassing hisobituarists in South Africa. Both England and India would benefit if theirformer captains moved along quietly and let the next generation get on withit, but that’s not exactly in the nature of either man.H is for Hair
The man who split the cricket world asunder with his pig-headed performanceat The Oval. Never mind the rights and wrongs of that infamous five-runpenalty or Pakistan’s subsequent protest. It was the absurd inevitability ofthe whole episode that still rankles. You could just sense that Hair, a manwith “previous” where subcontinental teams are concerned, was itching tocause a scene … and he amply succeeded.I is for Inzamam-ul-Haq
A moderately eventful 12 months for Pakistan’s man-mountain of a captain.Comedy dismissals, forfeited Tests, diplomatic stand-offs, seven-matchsuspensions. Like cricket’s Forrest Gump, Inzy seemed to have been thebewildered focus of every major event last year. Life wasn’t quite abox of chocolates for his team, though.

Mark Boucher and Makhaya Ntini celebrate incredible victory at the Wanderers © Getty Images
J is for JohannesburgA glorious freak of a performance, or a glimpse of the future of one-daycricket? The pitch was pristine and the bowlers were cannon fodder, notleast Mick Lewis (10-0-113-0) who joined Gillespie in the pub-quiz stakes,but the entertainment was unstinting. Australia made 434 … and lost. By onewicket. With one ball to spare. A disbelieving Bullring pinched themselveswith every six.K is for KP
No absurd hairstyles. KP’s weekly appearance in Heatmagazine had been secured by his celebrity engagement to Liberty X’s JessicaTaylor. His daily appearances on the back pages, meanwhile, were secured by another series of colossal performances. But watch this space.The rumour is that he’s less loved by his team-mates than he is by himself.When you see his kit go flying out of the dressing-room window at Sydneythis week, you’ll know it’s official.L is for Lalit Modi
Rampant commercialisation was the story of India’s year, and Modi was aman who would build a block of flats on the site of the Lord’s pavilion ifhe thought the BCCI logo could be weaved into the architect’s plans. Comeback Jagmohan Dalmiya, all is forgiven!M is for Monty
The new darling of English cricket saw it all last year. He was lauded and lampooned, showered with accolades and snubbed by his own coach.The BBC Sports Personality crown just eluded his grasp, Beard of the Yeardid not, but amid all the triumphs and tribulations, the one thing that shone through was his devout professionalism. Never mind his 40 wickets inthe year, his proudest achievement was his promotion to No. 10 in England’sbatting order.N is for Nandrolone
Cricket always thought it was too grand to get involved in such grubbyissues as steroid abuse, but then along came the incredible ego of ShoaibAkhtar to disabuse the naïve of such a notion. He and the less worldly-wiseMohammad Asif were busted for using the muscle-booster, Nandrolone, andbanned for two years and a year respectively. But then, inevitably, they gotoff on appeal, and a murky business got even murkier.

Darrell Hair sparked cricket’s biggest crisis of the year at The Oval © Getty Images
O is for Ovalgate
The first Test forfeiture in cricket’s 129-year history was a schemozzlefrom start to finish. The five-run penalty for alleged ball-tampering, theimpromptu post-tea protest from the Pakistanis, the brief flirtation with aresumption, the refusal of Hair and Billy Doctrove to play ball, thesingular lack of information being imparted to the crowd. At 10.30pm, almostsix hours and a thousand meetings later, England were awarded the mosthollow victory of all time.P is for Ponting
Or “Possessed”, for that is what Australia’s captain has been in his bid toright the wrongs of 2005. That summer, he was as tactically mobile as aDalek facing Doctor Who; this winter, he’s been as focussed as England havebeen flaccid – his furious 196 at the Gabba a case in point. And it’s notjust been the Ashes – his burning will scorched all opposition all yearlong; 10 Tests, seven hundreds, nothing less than victory on each occasion.R is for Retirements
Of which there were several, most of them high-profile and Australian.R is also for Ramprakash, who finally demonstrated he can cut it on the bigstage by inheriting Darren Gough’s crown in the BBC’s celebrityballroom-dancing caper, “Strictly Come Dancing”.S is for Stress-related illness
The mystery ailment that has, in all probability, brought MarcusTrescothick’s international career to a sadly premature end. He left thetour of India in February in tears, beneath an ECB smokescreen of incredibleimpenetrability, and has not been the same since. The threat of “burn-out”was voiced on numerous occasions in an over-loaded year, and Trescothick, one of the game’s hardest-working and most likeable characters,became its most high-profile victim.

Shane Warne passed 700 Test wickets and called an end to his Test career © Getty Images
T is for Terrorist
“The terrorist has got another wicket” was Dean Jones’s heroically dimremark, shortly after Kumar Sangakkara had been caught by South Africa’sbearded Muslim, Hashim Amla, during the second Test in Colombo. Jones wassacked by Ten Sports almost before the utterance had passed his lips, butwithin the month he was back, denying he’d ever erred. “Amla got the catch,Nicky Boje was the bowler,” he wibbled. “I’ll leave it up to you to work outwho I was referring to.” Nice one. Except it had been Pollock bowling at thetime.U is for Urn
After years of Aussie indignation that their Ashes urn was stillholed up in the museum at Lord’s, the MCC finally arranged for a specialone-off trip Down Under. “Urn, Ashes Mr” arrived in Sydney on October 17,having flown business class from London, strapped into its very own seat.The tour could have been the ultimate insult, given that England were, foronce, the holders, but it ended up as the ultimate incentive for victory.”It’s clearly too fragile to fly home,” said Ricky Ponting after sealing theseries in Perth.V is for Vermeulen
A sad footnote in the wider decline of Zimbabwean cricket. When thecountry’s cricket academy was burned to the ground in October, the finger ofsuspicion soon pointed at the troubled figure of Mark Vermeulen, a man whoearlier in the month had been found at the gates of Robert Mugabe’s palacein Harare, demanding to speak to the president, in spite of the fact thatpeople had been shot for less. In September 2005, he was banned from Lancashireclub cricket after a raging altercation with a member of the crowd, and asubsequent on-pitch punch-up.W is for Warne
Even the great man himself seemed pretty dumbfounded at the MCG last week.”I don’t know who’s writing my scripts, but they are pretty good,” heremarked, after grabbing five first-innings wickets, including his landmark700th, on the first day of his final Test in front of his adoring homecrowd. He went on to take seven in the match, as well as a valedictory 40not out, to set up the prospect of a farewell Ashes whitewash. What aperformer.

Conversion rates: a record-breaking year for Mohammad Yousuf © AFP
X is for crossing out a name on the team sheet
Which is what Graeme Smith was forced to do moments before the toss in November’s third ODI against India at Cape Town. As he walked down the pavilionsteps, he was met by Haroon Lorgat, the convenor of South Africa’sselectors, who insisted that Andre Nel was not fit to play and that AndrewHall should replace him. Smith vented his opinions in no uncertain terms,before kneeling on an adjacent pitch and making the necessary adjustments.Minutes later, still steaming with indignation, he was dismissed second ballfor a duck.Y is for Mohammad Yousuf
In 2006, the man formerly known as Yousuf Youhana gave a new meaning toconversion rate. He abandoned the underachieving wastefulness that haddefined the first seven years of his career, embraced Islam and all thedisciplines that are inherent in it, and clattered his way to a world-record1788 runs in the year, including nine hundreds in 11 matches. Coincidence? Idon’t suppose he thinks so.Z is for Zombies
Those poor fools who turned their winters upside-down, hoping to watchEngland retain the Ashes Down Under in a series so exhilarating that 2005resembled a seven-match ODI series between USA and Zimbabwe. Like the team,most fans had drifted out of contention before lunch on the first day atthe Gabba.Are there other incidents that we have missed out? Tell us what you would include.