Like all true fans of the sport I suspect that the sickening feelings I had on reading the latest allegations to hit the game were déjà vu all over again. Did corrupt cricketers go away just because the ICC formed a unit to investigate it?

The alleged scale, and I say alleged advisedly, of this new scandal seems to threaten the integrity of the sport once again. Two players lauded for their positive contribution to this series, captain Salman Butt and young pace bowler Mohammed Amir, are suddenly accused of deliberately, and frankly ineptly, serving up no balls on demand. Also accused are “out of form” wicket keeper Kamran Akmal, whose performance against Australia at Sydney raised the spectre of match fixing at the time and bowlers Mohammed Asif and Saeed Ajmal.

There are of course no shortage of agents and hangers on claiming influence with the players and whilst we should take the word of a man setting out to impress potential clients with a pinch of salt the evidence produced thus far is damning. Added to the circumstantial evidence and attendant rumours that are fuelled by a situation like this and it’s hard to see how England can take the field in the limited overs games against a team who apparently planned on deliberately losing matches.

This is no time for jubilation, finger-pointing and I-told-you-sos. It may not even be a time for innocent til proven guilty. Time will tell but I for one would be very surprised if the announced Pakistan squad for the ODIs and T20s remains unaltered by this news.

Let’s get it right this time and make fixing any aspect of a cricket match so risky that none will consider it worth it.

Cricket is a fantastic sport, possibly, if not my favourite sport and has been for the majority of my life. But the way the governing body and separate country bodies act really makes me hate it, almost like it tugs at my heart strings with every forthcoming announcement about change, it is a LOVE-HATE relationship. The recent news the Cricket Australia are to trial a 2 Innings a Side One Day game takes the biscuit for me. But it is not just Cricket Australia that sees cricket as ‘broken’, the ICC also fears that they can see the end of Test Cricket in the future.

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I don’t like it as much as my next door neighbour’s dog does but it goes without saying a natural balance has been upset.

It feels odd to think that the English cricket team now has the wood over Australia in the 3 cricketing formats. An Ashes win in 2009, victory over the old enemy in their first World Cup final for 23 years, lifting the World Twenty20 trophy before the Australians and now a sraight sets victory in the Natwest. Hell, they’ve even won the Women’s World Cup in our own backyard, the Southern Stars failing to make the play-off.

An exciting English outfit made up of youth, experience and a distinct X-factor makes the Australians look incredibly bland in comparison. Even the uniform stands out with those radioactive armpits. Did they have to take our national colour as well? Strangest of all is the situation the Australians find themselves in now, playing for pride in the final two ODI’s of the series, and dead rubbers.

Since when did the Aussies play for pride, and against England at that! Gone are the days where at The Oval or SCG Warne, McGrath and co. would butcher a beaten, bruised and barmy British outfit in the final Ashes test, the graveyard where dead horses were flogged. Normally the Aussies would be looking forward to a series whitewash with the old enemy, but this time they’re looking to be on the wrong end of it.

Another interesting twist is that of the Australians now having a pace attack that can barely stay on the park, let alone chase leather like they are now. The former Dud’s army is now a very capable bowling attack consisting of Anderson, Swann, Stuart ‘Manly’ Broad and some annoyingly capable support. Not to mention they’re destroying a flimsy Australian line-up as we speak.

And the final two stands. The third ODI must be the fifth time in 12 months that the English number 11 has saved them from defeat. What can now claim to be the best tail in world cricket shades the Australian final four, a former powerhouse that now consists of Doug ‘Leave’ Bollinger.

There’s only so much embarrassment one can take at the hands of the Poms. Over the last two weeks they’ve beaten us at rugby, soccer, lawn bowls and now cricket, the final blow. I’ll rip that urn from their hands if I need to but someone needs to sort it out!

Tim Bresnan and James Anderson jump for joy after completing victory, England v Australia, 3rd ODI, Old Trafford, June 27, 2010

Thanks to forum members Covvy and dajesmac for the heads up on a recent announcement of a Cricket video game on the website of Australian developer ‘Big Ant Studios’, who have been on a sport craze lately with releases of an NRL game and an AFL one on the way,  so clearly they aren’t afraid of a challenging genre of games.  From their website,

Big Ant Studios, Australia’s leading sports video game company, are proud to announce that Cricket for current generation consoles will be released this Summer – it’s Cricket like you’ve never seen it before!

Promising to be the best and most fun Cricket game ever to grace a console, the game shall include all nations of the world cup and all current formats including Fifty-overs, Test matches, and 20-20.

Stay tuned for more news and exciting competitions leading up to the launch day.

The site also mentions being ‘Current Gen’, but no detail on the exact consoles or whether there’ll be a PC version.

While much of the focus from cricket gamers has been on IC2010, those who are stuck on PC, or don’t want to buy a new game can welcome the news of the release by AbBh of the Beta version of the 1.0 release of the editor. The changelog includes :

• Added support for model files
• Added support for dwa files
• Added support for preview of dds textures
• Added support for automatic conversion of PNG, JPG and BMP formats to DDS
• And many more tweaks and fixes…

These developments will make the changes to AC09 both easier to make, easier to distribute, and wider ranging in their reach. Without all the hard work by AbBh, editing on AC09 would be basically impossible, and this development should mean more patches to be made in the future.

You can get it from the BIG Editor thread in our AC09 download forum.

Planetcricket.net have released their official review of International Cricket2010.

“We cricket fans often like to think that it is the nuances and complexities of the sport that make it what it is. Aside from making our sport so impenetrable at times to outsiders they also make it nigh on impossible to create a realistic computer simulation”

Read the entire review here.

Welcome to the sixth and final day of the PlanetCricket 2010 Awards. Today we will be announcing Best Cricket Moment of the Year, Best Series/Tournament, Best Cricket Game, Best Post Contributor, Best Cricket Game Download Maker

We begin with Best Cricket Moment of the Year, which turned out to be a one sided affair voting wise

Best Cricket Moment of the Year

1. Sachin Tendulkar Scoring 200 not out in an ODI  75.4%
2. Tamim Iqbal’s Test Century at Lord’s  10.5%
3. Lords Ashes Test  7.0%

Staying with actual Cricket, we move onto the best series/tournament of the past 12 months. Many contenders but the oldest series of all came out on top and results are as follows

Best Series/Tournament

1. The Ashes  30.4%
2. IPL  27.0%
3. T20 World Cup  23.5%

Next we move onto Best Cricket Game. There have actually been some new releases this year meaning some competition for EA Cricket 07. But I guess with the release of my ODI and test bowling patches have meant 07 remains on top for another year

Best Cricket Game

1. EA Cricket 07  35.9%
2. Ashes Cricket 2009  27.2%
3. International Cricket 2010 17.5%

Next is the highly coveted Best Cricket Game Download Maker. Many members make great downloads to extend the life of many cricket games and the voting was tight in this closely fought contest

Best Cricket Game Download Maker

1. Ahad  34.1%
1. AbBh  34.1%
3. Kabooka  17.0%

Finally we come to the most prestigious award of all, Best Post Contributor. This member makes constructive, thoughtful and helpful posts and is always someone whose posts you want to read

Best Post Contributor

1. Mark  35.9%
2. User2010  21.7%
3. Owzat  14.1%

So that concludes the Awards for another year. Thanks to all who voted and congratulations to all our winners.

We are still in process of finalising the prizes for our winners, who will be contacted soon advising how to claim their prize

Welcome to Day 5 of the PlanetCricket 2010 Awards. Today we will be announcing Best Test Side, Best Forum, Most Improved Member, Best Administrator, Most Helpful Member.

We begin with Best Test Side which of course is awarded to the side that the members feel are the best team in Test cricket. Like the ICC standings, India top the list and by a clear majority. South Africa just pip Australia for second spot again reflected in the ICC rankings.

Best Test Side

1. India        51.8%
2. South Africa        19.3%
3. Australia        17.5%

Click here to keep reading this article

Welcome to the results for Day 4 of the PlanetCricket Awards for 2010, they are shaping up to be one of the ‘best’ days of the awards, with it being one of two days in which all of the awards given start with the word ‘Best’ . For awards that are designed to promote excellence on PlanetCricket and in Cricket generally, we sure put a lot of effort in to wording the award names. But, as Dutchad’s already won the funniest member award, I suppose I best move on…

The first award for today is for the Best New Cricketer, it’s a category that caused a bit of debate over what exactly ‘new’ meant, I tend to agree with the view it is more of an award for a ‘breakthrough’ player, who got their big break in cricket this year. So, the first winner for today is… Eoin Morgan, who stated his case quite well yesterday with his first Test Century. He was a sizable winner in the poll, nearly doubling the votes over the next placed Mohamad Aamer.

Best New Cricketer

1. Eoin Morgan 32.8%
2. Mohammad Aamer 19.8%
3. Umar Akmal 17.2%

The second award for today is for the Best ODI Side, which goes to one of my favourite countries, Australia, who just pipped India for the win, which is exactly what is happening in the ICC rankings as well, so I suppose that means PlanetCricket passed this question on the test.

Best ODI Side

1. Australia 36.6%
2. India  34.8%
3. England 14.3%

Now to go away from something I know nothing about, on to the forum awards for the day, the first of which being the one for Best Site Feature, which goes to the feature on PlanetCricket that users like the most. The one I usually vote for, sig limits, didn’t make the poll this time. The award for this year has gone to vCash, the thing that is behind so many parts of the site, including the second place vBookie and other things like the Leagues section.

Best Site Feature

1. vCash  38.3%
2. vBookie 31.9%
3. View New Posts 16.0%

Moving on quickly, or at least at a moderate pace to allow the nominees for the next category to keep up – Best Older Member. The award is for the best member aged over 25, who provide, at least in theory, a lot of wisdom to the site. And for the third time in these awards, the winner is Dutchad, who in a very close contest beat previous category winner and administrator Barmyarmy; as well as the winner of… actually we haven’t announced that one yet.

Best Older Member

1. Dutchad 35.3%
2. barmyarmy 31.4%
3. Mark 29.4%

Finally, before I say too much, here is the final award for today, Best Global Moderator. This award goes to the best member with a green coloured username, and whose previous winners include such prestigious members as me and carry-over champion Sureshot, who has been beaten by Sohum, who if memory serves me correctly (and it often doesn’t), was my replacement as global mod when I got the admin promotion, so he’s lived up to the huge pressure that clearly places on someone.

Best Global Moderator

1. sohum 53.3%
2. Sureshot  26.7%
3. stevie 11.1%

And that concludes today’s awards, stay tuned for tomorrows announcement of the Best Test Side, Best Forum, Most Improved Member, Best Administraor and Most Helpful Member awards. You can discuss all of the awards in the forums.

As part of our efforts to improve server reliability and speed, PlanetCricket is moving to a new server shortly. Unfortunately this will come with some downtime during the crossover period, as well as shutting the forums to allow for the database to be moved and to ensure correct configuration of the new server. I expect to be carrying out this move early next week and will give 24 hours notice of the exact date.

The improved server should mean the site won’t experience the present issues with frequent unavailability, especially of the forums.

All efforts will be made to minimise downtime, but with these things, if anything can go wrong it usually does.