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The England cricket team have started a new craze after celebrating Wednesday’s victory in the fourth Ashes test by imitating a garden sprinkler.

After securing the Ashes with a convincing win by an innings and 157 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the team did ‘the sprinkler’ dance in front of English fans.

More than 250,000 people have viewed videos of the dance with thousands of clips of cricket fans emulating the England side appearing online, the Telegraph reports.

The dance involves holding one arm out and imitating the movements of a garden sprinkler.

According to England captain Andrew Strauss the dance is England’s version of the haka, the Telegraph reports, and was introduced to the squad by all-rounder Paul Collingwood.

The fifth and final Ashes test begins on January 2 at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Watch the dance:

- Herald online

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Movie critics love to talk about their favorite movies of the year ( here is the Cricket’s Top 10 for 2010), and sometimes they also like to ring out the old year by purging themselves of the year’s worst.

It’s cathartic, really — a way to get these turkeys out of our systems, never to speak of them again.

(A caveat: The Cricket, for reasons of scheduling and sheer luck, missed some of the year’s more reviled major movies, including “Grown Ups” and “Little Fockers.”)

Here is the Cricket’s list of the Bottom 10, the worst of 2010:

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LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) integrity committee, despite several hours of discussion here on Thursday, could not reach any decision about the three suspect players, namely Shoaib Malik, Kamran Akmal and Danish Kaneria, regarding their inclusion in the World Cup probables list.

Depending on the clearance by the integrity committee, the national selection committee will submit the list of 30 probables to the International Cricket Council (ICC) by Jan 5, for the World Cup.

The selectors are meeting on Friday to have a discussion on probables’ list but it is not confirmed whether they will be in a position to announce it on the same day.

On Thursday, the three players were interrogated about their assets and other off the field activities. The questions were based on information that the players had handed over to the integrity committee about their assets last week.

However, while the committee could not find any solid proof against any of them, the players were not looking confident after the grilling session but still vowed to fight till the end.

In their informal talk after the session, the trio said they had given all the replies of the PCB queries about their assets and off the field activities, but the integrity committee did not convey any decision to them regarding their fate. The PCB has not yet levelled any specific spot-fixing or match-fixing charges on the trio.

According to sources, despite having no proof, the PCB is reluctant to include the three players amid fears that the ICC may grill the board as well as the players itself later on which may cause further damage to Pakistan cricket.

It is learnt that the ICC has expressed some doubts about the suspected trio of Shoaib, Kamran and Kaneria and due to that, the PCB has not been considering them for selection since the last tour of England.

However, the ICC is not ready to share any kind of information about these players with the PCB as yet.

Sources said the PCB is likely to send all the information gathered by the integrity committee to the ICC and will perhaps ask it for guidance in taking a final decision on the matter.

Meanwhile, opening batsman Yasir Hameed, who had earned a bad name for the country by giving a controversial interview against the suspect players during the ill-fated England tour last August, also appeared before the committee on Thursday.

Sources said that he offered to give an apology for making those comments about the Pakistani players in England.

It is also learnt that two other players Khalid Latif and Naeem Anjum were also cross-examined by the integrity committee about their indisciplinary acts in the last Asian Games, held in China.

Coach Sadiq Mohammad and manager Anwar Ali of the Asian Games’ team in their reports, had mentioned indiscipline problems on part of both the players.

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MELBOURNE, Australia – Australia’s cricket team, on the verge of losing the Ashes series to England, will soon have a new team manager _ an expatriate Australian whose current position is operations manager for England’s rugby team.

Cricket Australia said Monday that Gavin Dovey will take over as team manager after the ICC World Cup in April. Dovey will replace Steve Bernard, who is retiring from the role he has held since 1998.

Previously, Dovey worked for the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority before moving to a role managing anti-doping with the England rugby union (RFU).

England has a commanding lead after three days of the fourth cricket test at Melbourne. A win would ensure it retains the Ashes.

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MELBOURNE, Australia – Australia cricket captain Ricky Ponting will miss the fifth Ashes test against England because of continuing problems with a broken finger, raising the prospect that his test career is over.

Vice-captain Michael Clarke was expected to lead Australia in the Sydney test starting Monday, although Cricket Australia said the official announcement of an acting captain would be later Thursday when the squad for the final test of the series was named.

Ponting was ruled out of playing after further x-rays on his broken little finger on his left hand “showed evidence that the fracture . . . has moved during the course of the Melbourne test,” Australia’s team physiotherapist Alex Kountouris said Thursday in a statement, adding that Ponting will likely return for the Cricket World Cup in February-March.

“I’m devastated to tell you the truth, it was the news I was dreading,” Ponting said on arrival at Sydney airport on Thursday. “During the game I didn’t think I’d done too much more to it.”

New South Wales batsman Usman Khawaja, who has been on standby for injured teammates twice in the series, is the most likely replacement for Ponting in Australia’s batting order.

Ponting’s injury, combined with the team’s failure to regain the Ashes and his own poor batting form, meant the fourth test which finished Wednesday may have been his last.

After England retained the Ashes with an innings win in Melbourne to take an unbeatable 2-1 series lead, Ponting said he was keen to keep playing but would consider the good of the team when making a decision about his playing status.

“I’m not thinking about it at all,” Ponting said Thursday when asked whether he would end his 152-test career.

Australia’s next scheduled test series is in August against Sri Lanka.

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Mumbai, Dec 29 : The auction for the fourth edition of the cash- rich Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 cricket tournament will see as many as 350 players from India and abroad going under the auctioneer’s hammer in Bangalore on January 8 and 9 next year.

With the courts providing relief to Rajasthan Royals and King’s XI Punjab, the two franchises whose contracts were terminated by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), a total of 10 franchisees would now bid for the players.

Barring a dozen players, including Indian superstars Sachin Tendulkar, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Virender Sehwag, who have been retained by five franchises in advance of the auction as per the IPL player regulations, most of the world’s top players would be up for grabs.

The list of players has 11 out of 12 century makers in the previous three IPL seasons, including the Twenty20 league’s fastest century maker Yusuf Pathan and 2010 ICC ODI Player of the Year, A B de Villers (South Africa), Cricket Board Secretary N Srinivasan said here today.

Former India skippers Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble and Rahul Dravid, too, would be available for pickings by the various franchises.

Other established IPL performers available at the auction include current Indian team members Gautam Gambhir, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra and Yuvraj Singh, as well as 2009 IPL’s most successful bowler (38 wickets) RP Singh.

”The DLF IPL auction is indeed a very exciting prospect. I am confident that IPL fans throughout India and across the world will be paying very close attention to which of the world’s best cricketers will be wearing their teams colours for the next IPL season,” said IPL Chairman Chirayu Amin.

–UNI

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