1000th celebration and a cricket with balls history lesson

This is the 1000th post of cricket with balls.

For new readers, especially our new TWC ones, Cricket With Balls is a cricket blog that could best be explained as “Like Gideon Haigh, if he was a perverted film junkie who never passed high school”.

Cricket with balls was originally started September 07 as a way for Sime, Big Daddy & myself to communicate in this busy work a day world.

We all love cricket, and during the 06/07 ashes I wrote the boys updates on the play as it happened.

Being a film student is hard work.

These transcripts, which when I find them will be posted on this site, were really the first ever embers of Cricket With Balls.

So the next year, instead of sending them emails I just posted my thoughts on the blog.

And Sime and Big Daddy ignored the blog, not because they hate blogs, but because V India was not the same as V England for them.

Quickly I had about 15 odd people reading it a day.

Old warhorse bloggers like TCWJ and King Cricket gave me links early on.

The MCG even gave me access to the wireless network at the G, if only my laptop worked 50% of the time.

And the juggernaut started taking shape.

I posted a few posts in New Zealand with our buddies Sportsfreak.

Soon after I was writing for Holding Willey as well.

Since then Cricket with balls has become a weirdly successfully phenomenon with its part Natalie Portman, part anti establishment agenda taking hold.

Mentions on stuff.co.nz, the times, the guardian, crikey, and ofcourse we were the first non English blog to ever win The Wisden Cricketer's blog of the month award.

Let me indulge in a brief walk down memory lane, the early months.

I started off with an introduction, as much for me as for anyone else. Certain rules were to be adhered too. Of those rules this one has always stuck with me, "This is the site that embraces the brown nosed gnome style of cricket commentary."
Early on I made long range predictions about world cricket, including a nuclear War where India and Pakistan wipe each other out.

I did my first ever live OBO (not one comment) really early on, except it was an OBO with a difference as I covered two sports at once, an Australia v England 2020 game, and Collingwood V West Coast football game. Don't call me a pioneer, but I probably am.

Early on I took important sides on players, Gayle for, Ahktar against, Watson against, Ashraful for, KP & Smith against, Hopes for, and Afridi for.

I gave a brief history of South Africa's choking past, I bagged Malik for playing the Allah card and invented the term proboters.

That was all in the first month, so virtually no one read it.

At that stage that really didn't bother me.

It was just nice to write for your friends.

But then I started getting quite a few hits, and it all started with this tribute to Inzy. People linked to it everywhere, and cricket with balls was starting to get well known.

Then I started the bushrangers blog, and while it never reached the hits level of this bad boy, actual cricketers read that blog.

After there things went pretty well for the blog, I got universal blogging recognition for my Natalie Portman piece and I wrote about my theory on the good bloke rule.

Now this blog is one of the most well known in the world.

Occasionally I get called a fuckwit, lefty pinko, idiot, fucking moron.

But I can't argue with any of that.

I would like to thank all my fellow bloggers, Miriam, Big Daddy, and Sime for their help. Not to forget Todd who said, hey man, why don't you have a cricket blog dude?

I would like to thank Tony Greig for his inspiration.

I would love to thank Michael Slater for not sleeping with my wife.

And most of all I would like to thank you guys for reading my bullshit with such gusto.

I promise you at least 1000 more posts, but probably at half the pace, cause what sort of total fuckwit moron lefty pinko strikes up his 1000th post before his one year anniversary.www.cricketwithballs.com

Now with new proper english lady blogger.