A bit of this-n-that

Some brief notes over the past few days:

1. Nasser Hussain, discussing days gone by in the commentary box, insisted that one of the worst things about losing to India in the 2002 NatWest Final was that England were beaten by a pair of lads that weren't even in the team now.
   
2. A heartening trend: more and more umpires are giving batsmen out who don't make a real attempt to play the spinner's straight ball (see for instance, the Taufel decision against Collingwood and the Bucknor decision against Tendulkar).
   
3. Prize for the most bizarre field placing: Dravid's decision to put in a leg-slip for Vaughan facing Zaheer. That leg-slip would have required Zaheer to bowl short-pitched stuff on the leg-stump. But he had three slips waiting as well. A field placing shouldn't come at the cost of rendering the rest of the field irrelevant.
   
4. Simon Hughes' piece on the first day's play managed to get under my skin a bit. So I wrote in, and my opening line, "This extended sneer, masquerading as a sports article, could do with a reality check" was promptly censored by the folks at the Daily Telegraph. Was it that offensive?