2007
Quote ... unquote


"We were at a warm-up game in Zimbabwe once and the fast bowlers were on with the old ball. I was standing at slip with Inzi next to me. We crouched down as you do when the bowlers were coming in. Four or five balls later, I noticed Inzi was still crouching and surprised, I asked him if everything was ok. He replied, "I'm fine, just trying to sleep. The ball is old and reversing so there's hardly a chance there will be any edges to snap up."
Aamer Sohail recounts a classic Inzamam-ul-Haq anecdote

"You know Hilditch isn't ringing to catch up for a drink."
Stuart Clark on when Andrew Hilditch, the chairman of selectors, rang to tell him that he was going to be dropped from the XI for Nathan Bracken

"At least I will be the only captain who won't have to worry about his hair melting."
Australia's captain, Allan Border, takes aim at his follicly enhanced opposite numbers, Graham Gooch and Martin Crowe, ahead of the Australian Beach Cricket Tri-Series in Brisbane

"You're likely to find more life on Mars than on this pitch."
Damien Fleming's views on the pitch for the fifth ODI between India and Australia in Vadodara

"If I'd got it on target I would've bowled him. I thought it was a nice way to go out."
The soon-to-be-knighted Sir Ian Botham reveals how he whipped out his "meat and two veg" to distract Australia's David Boon, as he ran in to bowl his final delivery in first-class cricket at Durham in 1993

"It's taught me that when I go on tour I have to take two alarm clocks."
England spinner Graeme Swann missed the team bus a couple of times on the tour of South Africa in 2000 and learnt from the experience

"We have a white towel with 'No Excuses' written on it. The first person to give up, we put their name on it so they've thrown the towel in."
Pakistan's fitness trainer David Dwyer reveals a unique motivational technique to keep the side in shape

"I listen to all these republicans, and if it was down to me I'd hang 'em! I honestly would. It's a traitor's game for me."
A clearly pro-monarchy Sir Ian Botham on the eve of receiving his knighthood at Buckingham Palace

"I pray every day. I make a cross on the crease when I take guard and say whatever I do here - win or loss - it is all for You."
Matthew Hayden talks about his faith


"I don't really care if Malinga is outdoing me on the hair stakes, as long as I outdo him for wickets - that is all that really matters."
Ryan Sidebottom insists he isn't going head-to-head with Lasith Malinga on the fashion front


"Five minutes ... five minutes! And on that basis Mr Hair lost his status as a Test match umpire!"
Robert Griffiths, Darrell Hair's barrister, to Sir John Anderson, chairman of New Zealand Cricket, after he explained how long the ICC took to decide to take action against Hair after the Oval Test

"I am a child, they are all legends."
... says Sreesanth about facing the Australians

"Obviously it is a big thing to break it, but breaking Javed bhai's record is not such a happy thing."
Inzamam-ul-Haq is not very concerned about the 20 runs needed to surpass Javed Miandad as Pakistan's leading run-scorer in Tests

"That was unplayable, just like the Spice Girls."
The new Shane Warne doll, a playmate for the Boonie doll, gets his sledges in gear

"I also saw a few things that I wouldn't expect from my son, Harrison, in a backyard game of cricket."
Australia's stand-in captain Adam Gilchrist talks about the high-tempered second one-dayer at Kochi

"We have something in common ... the ICC wants to sack both of us."
What the ICC chief executive, Malcolm Speed apparently said to Darrell Hair in the aftermath of the Oval Test, as revealed at Hair's employment tribunal in London.

"Well thank God we've arrived in Sri Lanka, where there don't appear to be any strip clubs whatsoever."
Paul Collingwood's relieved on realising there's little scope of being spotted in all the wrong places in Sri Lanka

"I have been doing meditation."
Sreesanth reassures those who fear that he might spontaneously combust on the cricket field one of these days

"If my sex appeal can cheer the players to perform well in a game, I think it's my biggest achievement."
Bollywood "item girl" Rakhi Sawant is charmingly self-effacing about her contribution to the game in India

"Once in a while, I do play with my son [Arjun], that's it ... He seems quite fond of the game ..."
Sachin Tendulkar on his son's interest in chess in the wake of Vishwanathan Anand's world championship triumph.

"I love curries so I should be okay on that front, although with the heat I might even have to get my hair cut!"
Ryan Sidebottom can take the spice but not the heat in Sri Lanka

"Cricket is about, bat ball, stump, wicket, fielding, what else is there? You use the same words in Hindi and English. I can understand that. I am from a village, I am just 24, I have played international cricket only for a year, but I am not an idiot."
Munaf Patel when asked about the problem of communication he was said to have faced within the team

Bahaduri aur bevakufi ke beech bahut kam fark hai [There is a very thin line separating bravery from foolhardiness]
Mahendra Singh Dhoni on being told that Adam Gilchrist had said he was willing to lead his team out to resume the second innings and that it was Dhoni's decision not to take the field after the rain interval


"The only time I took a ride in an open bus was in Belfast, earlier in the summer. But it was so cold that I had to quickly take shelter in the covered deck."
Sourav Ganguly's take on the open bus ride which the Twenty20 champions enjoyed

"We are told that Mumbai is a city which is always on the move. See, me and my boys have brought the entire city to a standstill today."
Mahendra Singh Dhoni after the Indian team received a tumultuous welcome from adoring fans on returning to India


"We're talking about recognition, not just money. We are not that greedy or jealous but we protest against the treatment being meted out to sports other than cricket."
The India hockey team's coach Joaquim Carvalho explains why his side are considering a hunger protest about the rewards given to the country's Twenty20 World Cup squad

I don't know, for us or for Pakistan?"
Graeme Smith wittily replies when asked if the absence of Shoaib Akhtar would give an advantage to South Africa during their tour of Pakistan

"I wish I knew. I'll let you know when I find out. But it seems to me that sort of information is not meant for me."
South African captain Graeme Smith isn't amused at not knowing who his vice-captain for the Pakistan tour is

"Cricket will make a great deal of money in the short term, money it has no obvious need for and will mostly waste, and it will be left a coarser, crueller, crasser game as a result."
Journalist Gideon Haigh with a warning for those running the game after the ICC World Twenty20

"This was a million, trillion times better than the World Cup - there are even rumours that's still going on in some remote part of the Caribbean - I hope this has been a lesson learned by the ICC that one-day cricket tournaments are fantastic, they're colourful, they're vibrant."
BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew with a clear message to the ICC after watching the success of the World Twenty20

"I don't agree with much of the criticism about the last two World Cups."
The response from ICC CEO Malcolm Speed shows that his head continues to be firmly buried in the sands of Dubai

"I want to play cricket, because I have found out that I am rubbish at everything else."
Stuart Law on why he won't retire just yet

"Hey beautiful, I'm just talking to my kids, the back door's open."
Shane Warne's text message which, according to his ex-wife, Simone Callahan, he accidentally sent to her. "You loser, you sent the message to the wrong person," she replied.

"Before I start I should say I read an article by you in Cricinfo. You'd said Australia were the favourites. Today I think me and the boys, we proved you wrong."
Speaking to Ravi Shastri after India's victory over Australia in the semi-finals of the ICC World Twenty20, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, India's Twenty20 and ODI captain, tells all that he reads Cricinfo. And apparently it's inspired him.


"I had an extra pray and asked Allah to give us another Championship. If you give 100% then Allah will always favour you."
Mushtaq Ahmed admits that Sussex had a little extra help on their way to winning the County Championship



"Warne managed to settle numerous scores in the construction of his list and the only surprise was his mother was not ranked a few places ahead of his former captain."
Peter Roebuck is just as dazed as the rest of the world as to why Shane Warne ranked Steve Waugh at No. 26 in his list of fifty best cricketers

"A lot of people tell me I bat like him, but I'm not even halfway there."
Yuvraj Singh dismisses comparisons with West Indian legend Garry Sobers after his six sixes in an over kept India alive in the ICC World Twenty20


"When I got hit for five sixes I got so many phone calls - nobody called me when I used to get a hundred and I got load of them making fun of me so I thought that wasn't right and I wanted to give it back."
And Yuvraj reveals his motivation - getting his own back on Dimitri Mascarenhas's punishment (as well as a few words from Andrew Flintoff)

"He sulked when he lost; shouted when he was angry. Instead of lifting the dressing-room in trying times, he became the chief mourner; the source of negativity."
George Dobell in The Birmingham Post with a scathing account of Mark Greatbatch's time as Warwickshire coach


"The big difference this year is that it's been a bloody awful summer all over the country. I've been going to other counties and hearing them say how much rain they've had, and said, 'What a pity. We've been putting up with this for 100-odd years.'"
Lancashire's chairman Jack Simmons has little sympathy following a miserable English summer

"I made a mistake, that's what it comes down to. The friends that I was with were not massively close friends, to be honest, and they took me to the bar. I realise it was inappropriate and I'm disappointed with myself."
England captain Paul Collingwood regrets heading to a lap-dancing club in South Africa. He was subsequently fined £1000.

"That had four written all over it - until it got stuck in the rocks at long-off."
The commentary from the PA describes the unusual playing conditions for the Basra Ashes between the English and Australian military contingents stationed in Iraq

"There is a shelf life to the captaincy in India in which you can give it your best. Maybe the shelf lives are becoming shorter as time goes by."
Rahul Dravid explains his decision to resign as India's captain


"It really amuses you. Winning a cricket match 3-0! It doesn't happen every time."
Twenty20 cricket is a novel experience for Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni


"I told him to be free, and control his mind. He's like a computer, he just has to bowl one ball but he might be thinking of bowling 100 different deliveries."
Mahendra Singh Dhoni on Sreesanth, who bowled the last ball of the match against Pakistan. The two teams ended with the scores tied and India won the match 3-0 in the bowl-out


"The plan was to stick to the bowling plan."
Australia's Mitchell Johnson offers a fascinating insight into his side's tactics

"I am a big teddy bear. Kids might not agree, but I am someone they could put around their little finger."
Colin Croft looks forward to the new term in his new job ... as a maths and PE teacher

"Our top order has been diabolical, even in the practice games here ... when you don't respect this game it gets up and bites you."
Reality bites for Ricky Ponting after Australia's defeat by Zimbabwe in the ICC World Twenty20

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