Cook reveals 5 step plan to improve the chances of England's ODI team

Alastair Cook, the basket in which the England Cricket Board has put all its eggs, has apparently been a little miffed. "My so-called friends are doing treacherous things like speaking the truth," he said, referring to comments made by Swann and Vaughan that England had no chances of winning the World Cup with Cook at the helm.

In the spirit of eXtreme PLanning (XPL), the motto the English team developed under Andy Flower, Cook disclosed a failed 5 step process for improving England's chances at the World Cup 2015. "It is not that I am not trying"

1. "I applied to play for the IPL in 2014. I even set a reserve price of $0.00. I was told that it would still be a negative ROI for the franchises

2. I tried to trick the opposition bowlers by wearing a Kevin Pietersen shirt, and practicing the KP strut as I walked out. Somehow, I slipped and fell over. I even batted right handed to keep the trick going. Maybe I was disoriented from falling over, but it just didn't work like I had planned.

3. Just after the bowler released the ball, and before I played it, I would ask myself "How can I play this delivery in such a way that I can get the maximum runs with a classical English shot which still is respectful of the game as well as the traditions of English cricket?" Sometimes, my wicket would be knocked over before I could come up with a good answer

4. I tried playing with a much lighter bat, thinking that it would free my mind and let me give it a real swing at the ball. The cognitive dissonance was a bit too much for my mind, and instead I ended up blocking the ball forcefully into the ground, but the ball rolled back and hit my stumps.

5. To increase my team's confidence in me and themselves, I sent a memo out to the groundsmen before the India series asking for pacy tracks which took no spin. But in all the confusion, I switched the words in the memo and ended up sending one which asked for spinning tracks which took no pace and ended up losing the one day series

6. As a bonus, I have even petitioned Cricket Australia to prepare wickets which take a lot of swing but not too much pace and bounce for the World Cup (I still have nightmares about Mitchell J). They replied that that was as likely to happen as Alastair Cook scoring a ODI double century. That raised my hopes, so let us see how it goes"

Dhoni announces mandatory 50 over declaration in test matches overseas

Reflecting on the contrasting outcomes of the one day and test series in England, the Indian skipper, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, has announced that he will institute a policy of mandatory 50 over declarations in both innings of a test match when playing overseas.

He said he came up with this radical conclusion after realizing that Indian batsmen do much better when they can bat for a set period of time and then move on to other things. In addition, a 50 over inning produces a score near 300 more often than not, and he tapped the cricket data monopolist, CricInfo and got confirmation that the Indian team barely makes it past 200 in most innings they play abroad.

"If nothing else," he continued, "this is a great way to boost our batting averages. I bet if I had told Virat that I will declare after 50 overs, he would have produced more runs in a single inning than what he eventually mustered over the entire series"

"In addition, when we make about 600 runs in a test, the chances of losing the game inside 3 days is almost statistically impossible. So even if we lose, at least we can avoid the 3 day humiliations"

Asked whether he has discussed this idea with the BCCI, he asked "BCCI who?"