Patrick Kidd describes this rather hilarious sms exchange between a press reporter and the Australia T20 opener.

I guess the Aussies are still hurting.

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!

Recently Ottayan and Som took a few digs at Luke Wright, Sajid Mahmood, and Ravi Bopara, the 3 English cricketers who within 24 hours talked about declining offers made to them from the IPL.

There were some commenters who jumped to the defence of these cricketers, and initially it may have seemed that the Indian bloggers were unfairly targeting the English.

But, Patrick Kidd of the Times has also come out with a little dig on the 3. It doesn't seem that bad when it comes from one of England's own now, does it?

In defence of the cricketers, I'd like to say job well done boys!

Andrew Flintoff is injured again and there's a slight worry about Collingwood - thus, a possible place in the squad for the 1st test against the Kiwis is up for grabs.

Sajid Mahmood doesn't have a realistic chance but Bopara or Wright could get the call. They could even make the cut ahead of someone like Owais Shah or Robert Key owing to their ability to bowl a few overs. More than a few actually.

Luke Wright's statement of declining the IPL offer and a century in a tour game against the Kiwis has been timed to perfection.

I like Luke Wright. One of the few English cricketers I like. In fact I like all unorthodox English cricketers who are not afraid to play with a bat that doesn't come down straight all the time.

I've liked Luke Wright since his debut ODI innings against the Indians. What a mauling that was.

And I like him even more now after his bold statement following the 120 against the Kiwis:

"Luckily it was in my arc, so I closed my eyes and had a little swing at it and it went over the rope. It was my day."

A guy who can hit a 6 and reach his 100 with his eyes closed must be special.