Model cricketers and the WAG

During the phenomenon of the 2005 Ashes, cricketers weren't just searched on Google for results on their stats and comments.

Players like Kevin Pietersen and Simon Jones became the heartthrobs of many an English rose thanks to that summer's euphoria for all things cricket and Google images proved popular, as did a KP thread on The Corridor's blog, which to this day must be (I'm guessing) one of the most commented cricket posts ever.

Since then, Jones has proved his worth on the catwalk and one friend in the world of fashion even tells me that cricketers prove worthwhile models, mainly because of cricket's perception or, more likely, less bling orientated than their footballing counterparts.

To get to the point, The Nutley is on the look out for any (aspiring) female writers out there, as this blog is hopefully moving to a new-look website in time for the World Cup and its content builds up. So anyone with an interest in profiling cricketers (with fashion/style in mind) please get in contact, using the email on this link.

**In the meantime, the Australian squad's WAGS were out in force this week, with the Aussie media going into a small frenzy at Michael Clarke's girlfriend.

Inzy the new KP?

How many times did Kevin Pietersen have to bat with the lower-order during the Ashes? Too many I can recall. And even when he moved up the order he still found himself batting with his bowling team-mates.

The trend seems to be sweeping through world cricket as well. On Pakistan's tour to South Africa, skipper Inzamam-ul-Haq has shipped the strike from his bowlers on a few occasions already.

40-odd and 35 in the first Test was followed by an unbeaten 92 batting with the lower order at Centurion today. KP has it far harder of course: Pakistan's tail has wagged considerably compared to England.

Blowers, exclamation mark!

A great story reaches Nutley concerning the indefatigable Henry Blofeld, Test Match Special's commentator. Now I've watched countless James Bond movies in my time but never thought of linking evil, piranha-keeping Blofeld with cricket's own version.

According to this month's OSM, Bond creator Ian Fleming named the villain after Henry's dear-old dad. Says Blowers:

"My Papa and Ian had known each other at Eton. When Ian was working on the novel that would become Thunderball in the early Sixties, he wrote to Papa telling him that he had come up with a new villain, that he wanted to name him Blofeld and would he mind. Exclamation mark, exclamation mark! Papa thought it mildly amusing and wasn't in the least bit worried. Mind you, that was before any of the films had been made, so he had no idea how notorious Blofeld would become."

The days when England players cajoled around Australia (late night casinos with Kerry Packer, flying Tiger Moths) may be long gone, but what are the chances of Kevin Pietersen reliving the good times of Beefy, Gower and Lamby with some spear diving on the Gold Coast as pictured above?