Matthew Hayden was recently bitten by a dog while out jogging, which got us thinking about animals that have been associated with cricket, in one way or another. New Balance U446 Red . Here are 11 of the finest, but if you can think of others, please send them to feedbackBotham the Pig By the Ashes tour of 1982-83, Ian Botham was beginning to fill out around the waist and was no longer the swing-bowling sylph of his heyday. That was good enough for the crowd at The Gabba, who smuggled a piglet in through the turnstiles (by stuffing an apple in its mouth and convincing the steward he was soon to be lunch), then released him on the outfield with Botham scrawled on one flank, and Eddie (in tribute to the equally rotund Eddie Hemmings) on the other. For anyone contemplating a similar stunt this winter, make sure your pig isnt sponsored. Concerns about ambush marketing mean youd probably have more chance of getting it in than a can of Coke.Cock-eyed SparrowsThere are several instances of sparrows being felled in flight, but the most famous casualty was the bird struck at Lords in 1936 when MCCs Tom Pearce bowled to Jehingir Khan of Cambridge University. The dead bird was stuffed to add insult to injury and can still be seen in the Lords Museum. It is not the only avian victim at Lords. In 1866 during Middlesexs match against Nottinghamshire, Tom Hearne was about to bowl when he spotted a pigeon fluttering overhead. He took aim and brought it down dead as a doornail. It too was stuffed and kept as a Hearne family heirloom.Snakes in the standsWhen Pakistan visited India in 1999, Shiv Sena, a Hindu extremist movement, were less than happy with the idea of sporting contact between the two nations. In the build-up to the Test, they threatened to release poisonous snakes onto the outfield during the game. In response, the police hired 30 snake charmers to patrol the stands and be ready to pounce should the need arise.Mackerel barrageIn 1986 during a match in the Cricketer Cup, Simon Hazlitt, batting for Old Cliftonians against Stowe Templers, was almost felled when a mackerel was dropped from a great height, narrowly missing him as he took guard. The assailant was a seagull who had stolen the fish from the sea-lion enclosure at the nearby Bristol Zoo.Beefy the BullAt Dunstall in June 2005, the players and spectators at Derbyshires second XI match against Leicester got more than theyd bargained for, when a bull leapt over the fence from a neighbouring field and rampaged around the ground for 20 minutes, pursued by a hapless farmer. I think one of the bulls got amorous with a cow or perhaps another bull - I am not sure about the sexual orientation of bulls, said Karl Krikken, Derbyshires coach, who was one of many onlookers sent scattering.Jacko the MonkeyThe Poona Monkey disrupted play in the match between MCC and Maharashtra in December 1951. Local reports state the creature, known as Jacko, quietly ambled onto the field and was spotted by one of the umpires fielding at midwicket. A groundsman was summoned and it was chased away with sticks.Donkey on a lengthIn 1918 a Priestley Cup game between Undercliffe and Lidget Green in Bradford had to be replayed after a mystery damp patch appeared on a length. After subsequent investigations it emerged that the culprit was the club donkey which had relieved itself while pulling the roller during pitch preparations. Lidget Greens suspicions were raised as the animal had hit the spot where England offspinner Cecil Parkin landed to ball to such good effect. Although Undercliffe won the replay, they were banned from playing any future cup matches at home. The donkey was given a severe reprimand.Merv the Mutt The teams were out on the field, ready for the first ball of third Test between England and Australia at Trent Bridge in 1993, but there was an unexpected hold-up. Running up and down at the Radcliffe Road end of the ground was a sandy coloured mongrel with absolutely no intention of leaving the field. Eventually, Merv Hughes took it upon himself to deal with the problem, and got down on his hands and knees to coax the hound to heel. Given Hughes feral reputation, the question on most peoples lips was who was more likely to give rabies to who? But Hughes eventually won the battle of minds, and Michael Slater was on hand to dump the mutt into the arms of the steward on the boundary rope. More than 60 people immediately rang the RSPCA to adopt him, with Graham and Sally Bosnall of Derby winning the race, and naturally enough, naming him Merv.Peter the Cat The most famous mog in Marylebone, Peter was the Lords cat for 12 years from 1952 to 1964, when his ninth life finally ran out on Bonfire Night (it is unknown whether any firecrackers were involved). He is the only animal to earn a mention in the Wisden Cricketers Almanack where, in the obituaries section, it is written that he was a cat of great character and loved publicity ... [whose] sleek brown form could often be seen prowling on the field of play when crowds were biggest. He has since earned an unexpected tenth life, after lending his name to a new anthology. Surprisingly no pictures are known to exist of Peter, although his successor, Sinbad, was snapped during a Southern Schools v The Rest match in 1963.Shark in the deepIn 1934 R Townshend Stephens wrote to The Times to recall an incident in Sohar when a game was taking place on a matting wicket laid out on a beach. A ball was swung out to the deep, but it fell not into the sea but was swallowed by a shark, he explained. Townshend Stephens, who was umpiring, gave the batsman out and the entry in the scorebook read caught Fish bowled Burkitt Ullah.Hansie the rabbit Peter McIntosh, an 11-year-old cricket nut from Northampton, had the misfortune of naming his new pet rabbit Hansie just three days before the match-fixing scandal erupted in April 2000. As Cronje Srs name was dragged through the mud, his bunny namesake sat chewing lettuces and going about his rabbity business, oblivious to the fact that he was now the talk of the town. We couldnt believe it, said Pauls mother, Elaine. Our nine-year-old, Lauren, has been telling everybody that our rabbit has been arrested. New Balance 798 . -- Ohio States Urban Meyer has never had any issue acclimating to the biggest stages in college football. New Balance 1500 .J. -- Marty Brodeur beat the Pittsburgh Penguins yet again. http://www.nbalanceshoesuk.biz/new-balance-998-uk.html . Colin Wilson had two goals and an assist, and Mike Fisher scored a goal and helped set up two others in the Predators 6-4 victory over the Red Wings on Monday night. I still remember the smell of the newspaper when he hit that six that shattered a generation of hope. At the age of ten, I was standing in the lobby of our hotel in Sikkim, holding that hitherto unclaimed newspaper with trembling hands, as I visualised a hapless Chetan Sharma running to the wicket like a gullible lamb toward a lions den. Sharma then bowled what can best be described as a lolly, which was launched into orbit by Javed Miandad, doing his best impersonation of Obelixs PFAFF!!. The legend goes that the ball was never recovered because it melted into thin air upon crossing the boundary.It did not matter that I had heard about this unfortunate event on the train to Sikkim the previous night. I was travelling on a school excursion and came across a crestfallen passenger who told me that the world had just ended in Sharjah. However, I did not truly believe him until I read about it in the newspaper the next morning. This was true of most matches that I watched in my childhood. To me, they only materialised when they appeared in the newspaper the next day.Take, for instance, Ravi Shastris heroic 107 on a bouncy pitch in Barbados; it was an innings that should have won him an award for bravery. It came against a fearsome West Indies attack that read: Marshall, Ambrose, Bishop and Walsh. Even as the rest of the Indian batting line-up crumbled around him in a heap to 63 for 6, the statuesque Shastri struck 12 boundaries in a dogged riposte. I followed the match through a newspaper, with a one-day delay and a heavy dose of imagination. He must have hit the peerless Malcolm Marshall for at least a couple of fours. Surely one of them was a chapati shot.You see, Shastri was my hero because he played these match-defining innings that became commonplace when a curly-haired 16-year-old emerged to dominate the sport. Until Sachin Tendulkar arrived, I drew succour from the many displays of batting obduracy from Shastri, who seemed to use a bat to win a staring contest on the pitch. His was the first name I checked on the scorecard in the newspaper, even if his more gifted, but infuriatingly fragile colleagues scored more runs. I knew from my newspaper snippets that Shastri had often patted down many thunderbolts as an opener before he gave way to the frail wizardry of Mohammad Azharuddin.One year, I willed myself to learn the Telugu alphabet because the Telugu daily showed up at our doorstep a couple of hours before the English newspapers. It gave me great joy to read A..ja.. ha.. roo..din next to the score of 109, a withering display of artistry in an otherwise soporific series played on dead pitches in Pakistan. India somehow claimed a 0-0 moral victory in that series. No matter the result, there was unbridled joy in reading about my Hyderabadi idols conquest of Mt Imran. Imran Khan was caned to the tune of 100 runs, which was fitting balm for the failure of a certain RJ Shastri, who scored a total of 16 runs in two innings.New Balance 997 Pink. I would be remiss in not mentioning young Tendulkars brilliant 59, in only his second Test, a harbinger of many superhuman feats. Newspapers have given way to a digital form of media, most of which are quite effective in representing this great sport, but nothing that I tell my seven-year-old son will convince him that reading cricket news in the early morning newspaper was a multi-sensory experience. It involved touch, smell, sight and, most importantly, boundless imagination. Even as every word unravelled in front of my eyes, my mind drew batting arcs and banana swings to fashion memorable suspense-filled storylines.There is a distinct memory in my mind of a match that I went to see in Lal Bahadur Stadium in Hyderabad in 1987. I was 11. This was the second ODI between Pakistan and India. At this time, India were finding every possible way to lose to Pakistan, and I held very little hope that the result would be any different that day. India scored a respectable 212 in 44 overs, powered by Shastris 69 not out. One of his two sixes landed a few feet from my seat in the pavilion, which is one of my career highlights as a cricket fan.Pakistan inevitably began chasing down the target, powered by Saleem Maliks 84, much to the chagrin of the full crowd in Hyderabad. Run by run the target was being shaved down with precision. Still, India managed to keep the game close till the very end. In fact, so close that the run equation came down to Pakistan needing two off the last ball. Abdul Qadir faced the redoubtable Kapil Dev and the entire stadium waited with bated breath. What happened next was a blur.Kapil Dev ran in and bowled, Qadir tried an agricultural swing. The ball squirted off his edge and then there was bedlam. It appeared that Qadir had run himself out trying to get the winning run and the scores were miraculously tied! Nobody in the crowd was quite sure what had happened. After a few minutes, there was an announcement on the speaker saying that India had won the match because they had lost fewer wickets. While the crowd roared its approval, I sensed that something was off. The result was surreal. The ending was farcical theatre.I realised that there was only one way to fix the confusion in my mind. The next morning, I jumped out of bed at 6am and ran excitedly towards our verandah. Lying on the floor was a fresh, untouched copy of the Hindu. I got goosebumps as I began to slowly peel apart the pages to reveal the match that I was going to watch again.Want to be featured on Inbox? Send your articles to us here, with Inbox in the subject line. Cheap NFL JerseysCheap NFL Jerseys ChinaCheap Jerseys From ChinaCheap NFL Jerseys AuthenticWholesale Jerseys ChinaCheap NFL Jerseys ChinaNFL Cheap JerseysCheap NFL Jerseys ' ' '
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