The Reverse Sweep

London Calling - the end of an era

 

When we arrived in the South of France in January 2005, Kevin Pietersen was yet to make his Test debut, England hadn’t won the Ashes since 1986/87, Tony Blair was still Prime Minister and no-one had heard of the Arctic Monkeys.

We started this blog at the end of 2009 and have been able to post on a fairly prolific basis thanks to not exactly being busy at work.

All that is about to change as we are moving back to England in the next few weeks for a job in London and house in Surrey – how very middle class!

Today is my last day at work in France and the coming weeks will be taken up with all the joy of relocating from one country to another.

This blog has a bit of an uncertain future. We will be popping in from time to time and we’ve already scheduled a feature on our favourite cricket blogs, which will run over the next few weeks.

But we fully intend to maintain this blog – it’s too much fun to let go – and with the new job likely to be very busy we will have to adopt a quality over quantity policy. That could prove to be a challenge!

Lastly, if anyone fancies renting our four bed villa with pool in the South of France in August or September then please feel free to visit our page on Holiday Rentals for pictures and a full description.

Where next?

Read all our County Cricket coverage

See if you agree with our other County Championship XIs of the week

Check out all our Reverse Sweep cricket heroes and zeroes

If you like this, follow us on Twitter @thereversesweep

Preity Zinta vs. Shilpa Shetty

Yesterday, as part of our A-Z round-up of the third season of the Indian Premier League (A-Z of IPL3 Part 1), we suggested that C stood for Celebrity and used this as an excuse to include a picture of the rather attractive Shilpa Shetty.

This prompted some amusement on Twitter where I was advised by mspr1nt that Preity Zinta is much better looking than Shilpa.

Although I abhor the concept of celebrity I am a man, so if Preity was indeed prettier than Shilpa, I needed to find out for myself.

And rather helpfully, I managed to find a picture of them together (Shilpa is on the right)...

It's still Shilpa who wins the day for me!
  

Good riddance

This is a blog about cricket. Period. But just occasionally, I feel the need to rant about something else and boy do I need something to cheer me up after the week I've had at work.

So it was that I perused the BBC Sport website whilst I munched on an insubstantial and pretty disgusting sandwich at my desk at lunch today.

And there it was. Manna from heaven. The two f***ing yanks that have made it their mission to destroy Liverpool FC since their arrival three years ago, have finally bowed to the inevitable and announced that they plan to sell the club.

It won't get us in the Champions League for next season and it won't get our best player Xabi Alonso back from Real. But it is a start.

So bog off yanks and a thousand curses on you.

The best cricket blogs in the world

My friend and colleague at World Cricket Watch, David Siddell has certainly been a busy bee. He has compiled an excellent summary of the 40 best cricket blogs currently active on the web.

I can assure you that no nepotism was involved in David's choice and am delighted to report that we at the Reverse Sweep are included amongst the usual suspects and a number of blogs I wasn't previously aware of.

Go and have a look at 'the 40 most exciting cricket blogs on the web' and do let David know if he has left any other good blogs out.

Adolf Hitler and cricket

Reading the Times Online today, I was surprised to see this article about Hitler captaining a team of German soldiers to play against British POWs during World War I. It is a truly brilliant article and I can only imagine that as a pioneer of blitzkreig (or lightning war), Hitler would have been an avid follower of the IPL. And Lalit Modi, of course!

Back to life, back to reality

For the past six or so months I have discovered, albeit belatedly, the pleasures of blogging about my main passion - cricket. During this time, I have started this blog, been employed as a writer (unpaid) for World Cricket Watch, submitted posts to Pongo Cricket and discovered the joys of Twitter.

Some of you will have noticed that the frequency of my posts have been fairly prolific. That is, in part, down to the fact that I am in the first flush of life as a blogger. However, that is not the main reason.

For the past six months due to internal politics and typical french inefficiency, I have been employed (or under-employed) as a sales director in a department with nothing to sell and no team to manage. I have as they say in France, been stuck in the merde. No one seemed to mind that I was being paid to do effectively nothing except blog on cricket, listen to music and lose some lard in the gym. I suppose in some sense I have been a paid cricket writer, which considering it is my dream vocation has been a pretty good gravy train to be aboard on.

 
However, all this is about to end. On Monday I am supposed to be taking up a new role in the same company, where I really will have a lot of work to do. That is if they can find me a desk (shouldn't three months notice that I am coming be enough?), actually confirm my promotion in writing (still waiting) and press the necessary button to approve the transfer to the new department (again, isn't three months enough notice?). Being a french company, there are lots of meetings, masses of prevarication and no actual decisions.

Trust me, if Ricky Gervais had worked in this company then he would have had enough material for ten series of The Office. But enough of my travails, what does this mean for my blogging?

Well, once the actual transfer goes through and I am happily(?) ensconced in my new role, it means that I will become a normal blogger i.e. one that has to fit submitting posts into their out of work activities such as looking after my family, sleeping and defecating. I fear that my prolific output to this point will be drastically lessened.

But before Shane Watson and my other targets for ire rest a little easier, I am determined that I will keep the dream alive of being a properly paid cricket writer before I retire and before England win an Ashes series in Australia. So that gives me about 30 years then...