Cricket Bloggers on Top of the World

We set up our own University, we hired our own faculty, we got referred by Prem Panicker to the IPL, we even bought and developed our own Island.

And now we are being mentioned in The Wisden Cricketer, The Times, and Linq.

Uncle J's Cricket with Balls was recently the "Blog of the Month" in June's edition of The Wisden Cricketer.

Whereas Patrick Kidd, the Sports Editor of The Times mentioned Well Pitched on his cricket blog. In the same post, he also mentioned the only other blog that covered the IPL as seriously as we did - Outside The Line.

In another post, Patrick Kidd mentioned Miss Field and referred to her legendary post on Graeme Smith & Facebook.

Us cricket bloggers, i.e. the faculty of the Allen Stanford University for Cricket Bloggers are surely going places.

Thats not all though.

I recently received an email from a man named Alpesh from www.linq.in. In his email, Alpesh introduced Linq as:

"Linq tracks posts from Indian blogs and lists them in order of recent interest. We offer syndication opportunities and many tools for bloggers to use in there web sites"

In the same email Alpesh mentioned that Well Pitched had received the following awards on Linq:

1.Best Sports Blog of week on 2008-06-01.
2.Best Sports Blog of week on 2008-06-08.
3.Best Sports Blog of month for May 2008.
4.Best Sports Blog of all time.

I went over to www.linq.in to check out the awards ("Linq's Awards" in the left menu) and figured that there were various categories of awards including best sports blogs, best general blogs, best entertainment blogs, best recipe blogs, and best language blogs.

All from India.

Well Pitched is a Pakistani blog, not an Indian blog, but our majority readers are from India - over 50% of our daily traffic comes from India, which is probably why Linq recognized us.

I hope being Pakistani does not disqualify us from being a part of Linq as we really appreciate their effort of taking in votes, categorizing blogs, and ranking them.

We weren't alone in winning those awards over at Linq. Other faculty members of the Allen Stanford University for Cricket Bloggers won awards as well.

Tim's Third Umpire was also one of the Best Sports Blog for May 2008. While those categorized as the Best Sports Blogs of all time included Homer's Do paise ka tamasha, John's Island Express, Tim's Third Umpire, Golandaaz's Smart Cricket, and Samir's Eye on Cricket.

So Keep it up guys. We are definitely going places, and right now we sure are at the top of the world!

Missing in Action

The blogging world is like a suspense thriller really, you blink an eye and you miss something important.

As always I disappeared for a bit for a day and half during the weekend, and the only reason I am back today is because of the ongoing Pakistan vs India Final of the Kitply Cup.

I usually catch up on the blogosphere on Sundays after Thursday evening, but today was an exception and I realised I had missed quite a bit.

Uncle J Rod got picked as the Blog of the Month in this June's edition of The Wisden Cricketer. congrats Uncle J, you truly deserve it.

Meanwhile the tipping bloggers made their picks for the 20-20 match and the ODIs between England and New Zealand over at Sportsfreak's tipping competition for bloggers.

Miss Field, while congratulating Uncle J for the mention in the Wisden requests for support for the Silly Point, and also ponders who the Wisden will pick next month - us or the Suave one?

Ottayan asks readers on what their superstition used to be during Pakistan and India's matches in the past, while Som wonders why Geoff Lawson even opened his mouth.

Homer decided to go statistical this weekend as he tested Uncle J's theory on Micheal Clarke, and his analysis was as always well backed up blogosphere's statistical grand daddy (or Ninja as Uncle J likes to call him), David Barry.

And, the former Wisden Blog of the Month, King Cricket, told everyone how much they love Paul Collingwood.

While catching up on the cricket news I could not believe that England won the 20-20 match against New Zealand. Its besides the fact that I lost out on a point on the tipping competition, but how can the Kiwis lose to England in the shorter version of the game?

I wonder if $1 million had something to do with that.

In another part of the world, Mohammad Asif, whose case will now not be heard till 22nd June 2008, gave a very interesting interview over the phone booth to a Pakistani newspaper.

Whats funny is that he's thinking about a football career now! 2 weeks in a Dubai jail can do that to you I guess.

And in the West, The Aussies seem to be on top after the Windies had a sniff on day 1. This was Windies' best chance and they blew it up yet again. And that too when the Aussies unleashed their most unexciting spinner ever.

Its always good catching up on cricket - miss a day and a half and you've lost the plot. It was never like this before.