Part two of my annotated log of cricketing thoughts as tweeted over the summer holiday period. Some tweets have been deleted for reasons of clarity and sanity.

January 2, 2010:

#cricket I probably won't get around to blogging it, but my cricketer of the 2000s is Muttiah Muralitharan. Runner-up: Adam Gilchrist. 10:13 AM Jan 2nd

#cricket I find it hard to get used to the Sydney Test starting on January 3, not January 2 12:24 PM Jan 2nd

For no obvious reason I haven't done a blog entry about cricket since my end-of-year piece on December 30 (apart from a item spruiking my book "Today In Cricket" and why haven't you bought it yet?). Worse still, my daily Test match entries conked out after the opening day of the Australia v Pakistan First Test.

I can't believe that it more than five years since the last time I blogged about the brilliant Charlie Brooker. Anyway, here is his two-minute primer on news reporting, from his BBC 4 TV show "Newswipe", that has been deservedly doing the rounds on Youtube this week. (Occasional coarse language warning, less than you'd generally expect from Mr Brooker actually)

See important update below

After years as an online-only presence, "Today In Cricket: Events on this day in cricket history" is now released in print.

Around six thousand fun-filled facts on births, deaths and interesting events in the sport of cricket for every day of the year, based on my "Today In Cricket History" feature which has appeared in various forms on the internet and other like media over the past seventeen years, plus a few short essays by me which have not previously been published.

Can there be a more appropriate song for the start of the new decade than "1980" by Gil Scott-Heron?

It's almost as terrifying as the prospect of a Bros comeback tour, but here, back after an eleven-and-a-half year absence and for one night only, I give you The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Cricket in 2009.

An intermittently annual tradition for me since about 1996, has been my list of what I regard as the top ten news stories about cricket for the calendar year. I now present my 2009 edition. There's a little bit of overlap among some stories, and some are not single events but rather a collection of events over time. Sadly and tragically, Number One on this year's list picks itself, but some of the others required a bit of thought. If you can think of anything major that has happened since 1 January 2009 that I have missed, please leave a comment.

The following is a compilation of a monthly column that I wrote which originally appeared in Cricinfo in 1996, 1997, 1998. It was done as a not-too-serious companion piece to a Player of the Month selection that I was also doing for Cricinfo over the same period of time. I have modified some of the links in this version for clarity. Note also that these awards pre-date another certain Google.

Oh run ye, oh run ye, to the striker's end.

December 26.
Boxing Day, or Feast of Stephen?
(Waugh that is.)