Michael Clarke's twin tons makes him the first batsman scoring over 300 and 200 runs in the same series after Wally Hammond and Don Bradman. Wonderful start to the year 2012. The fourth test (Australia Vs India 2012) is shaping up to be yet another uphill task for India to draw or win as Australia posted another mammoth total of 604 for 7 declared in the first innings.

Last weekend we traveled to Fort Lauderdale, Florida to attend the third edition of the US Cricket Open 2011 at Central Boward regional cricket stadium. We had a booth at the entrance and most of our cricket range was on display there, the T-20 games were played around several cricket grounds and it was quite an enjoyable sight to see Cricket flourishing in USA.

The cricket ground was well maintained and looked perfect for the tournament. I must admit that is the best looking ground I have seen in United States. In december the temprature was around 70 to 75 degrees and very comfortable for playing cricket.

As an sponsor we provided the balls and scorer shirts to the administration and officials. All the umpires were wearing black shirts with CE and US Cricket Open logo and our website url printed on the back of the shirts. Tournament had decent media coverage and was televised live in USA.

We met the former president MAQ (Mohammad Afzal Qureshi) of Cricket Council USA who is now running for the president of USACA (United States of America Cricket Association), along with the current cricket council president Dr. Rahim Gul. The tournament was well organized and had some close games.

The tournament was won by the first time participant Trinidad & Tobago, congratulations to them. It was wonderful to be there and meet with the future stars of American Cricket.

Cricket sets are a great gift for children who want to learn and play cricket in their backyards. The young American wooden cricket Gift set comes with four stumps, a set of bails, a light weight cricket bat and a ball. The whole set is packed in a nice strong hand carrying bag for storage of the cricket geat. This holiday season the set can be a great gift for children and their families who like to play and enjoy cricket for fun.

The set is available in sizes 4, 5 and 6. So if you love cricket and live in USA then you can purchase the set from our website which can be shipped the next business day. For serious young cricketers we also have hard ball cricket gear including bats, gloves and legguards available in our cricket kids gear section. The section features all the equipment available in youth and children sizes. Happy holidays and our very best wishes from Cricket Equipment USA.

While watching cricket matches on television I always tend to look at the speed of the ball delivered by the bowler. The technology gives us a good idea of the pace of the fast bowlers of the current era, generally any ball delivered at 140 + Km is considered fast and the bowler is categorized as a genuine fast bowler. There are fast bowlers such as Brett Lee, Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Sami who have touched as much as 160 Km. In older era Jeff Thompson of Australia was considered the fastest of the lot but technology was primitive at that time and there is no documented evidence to support the claim.


So now we have the technology to measure a bowler's speed of delivering the ball, I have recently developed an interest in measuring the speed of the ball when a batsmen drives the ball, I think there will be a lot of interest if the speed of the ball is recorded after batsmen drives or hits the ball. It will be nice if we can see the traveling speed of the ball after it is struck by the batsmen. Maybe one day we will see that as technology continues to evolve. I would love to see how hard David Hussey, Johnaton Trott, Sachin Tendulkar, Shahid Afridi, Ross Taylor, Hashim Amla, Shane Watson, AB de Villiers, Yuvraj Singh or Abdul Razzaq can hit the cricket ball.

This thought came to my mind mainly because I was interested in finding out the performance of various branded bats including our CE bats. So how do you test ? there are several bats in the market some as expensive as $500.00, does those bats give you an added advantage over some of the cheaper bats available in the market ? I was curious and wanted to conduct a crude test to see how different bats perform when used by the same batsmen, obviously using the same power to strike the ball with different bats. Read the observations and view the results of our cricket bats testing.

Ever wondered why Teams in a T20 game score in excess of 200 runs in 20 overs ? and when they play in a test match in which batsmen have so much time and deliveries at their disposal, scoring the same amount of runs seems an uphill task and teams struggle to go past 300. This remains a mystery or perhaps the mindset of the players changes as they move from T20 to Test Cricket. So believing is achieving :) So basically defensive state of mind creates less runs and more wickets in a test match and an aggressive and positive state of mind gets teams more runs and less wickets.

With cricket evolving every day it is better to approach any form of cricket by batsmen to play aggressively. Just our observation and point of view against the concept that batting in a test match should be about blocking balls and batting for longer durations.

Cricket Equipment USA is a proud sponsor of US Cricket Open 2011 to be held on Dec 1-4, 2011 in South Florida. The tournament is the biggest ever in the history of North American Cricket. We are planning to be there and meeting with upcoming American cricketers and guest cricketers from other countries. The tournament is organized and marketed by Cricket Council USA.

 

Read more about the US Cricket Open 2011 tournament.

 

August 27th 2011 - This weekend we witnessed triple headers (Two Semi Finals and a Final) climaxing the Friends Life T20 tournament in Birmingham, England. We've had an extraordinary day at Friends T20, two one over eliminators in both semifinals witnessed for the first time in T20 cricket, we haven't seen one but two in a row. Leicester held their nerve to clinch the first semi final with an extraordinary finish.

Jefferson played brilliantly and specially the last shot he played, crowd loved the moment, Leicestershire a small county let by Paul Nixon pulled an astonishing performance to move into the finals.

 

On the second game Shahid Afridi scored 80 for Hampshire and the arrival of rain took the game to DL. The game tied again and Craig Kieswetter and Buttler scored 16 off Shahid Afridi in the Eliminator (Super Over). Alfonso Thomas's bowled a magnificent super over to keep Afridi from getting close to 16 and winning the semifinal.

The final match between Somerset and Leicestershire was a classic example of catches win matches. Paul Nixon took a stunning one handed catch from the back of the stumps to get rid of Kieron Pollard. There were other outstanding catches taken by Leicestershire's fielders to dissmiss Somerset for 127. It was a fairtale ending for Leicestershire and Paul Nixon would not have wished for any better ending of his career.

Leicestershire 145 for 6 (Jefferson 35, Pollard 2-24) beat Somerset 127 for 9 (Trego 35, Cobb 4-22) by 18 runs.
 

Within few week Shoaib Malik was cleared of all allegations and has been reinstated in the Pakistan Squad. He will be part of the squad for the Zimbabwe tour. This is certainly a rare good move on part of PCB to have an experienced player like Shoaib in the side. With Shahid Afridi possibly retiring and Abdul Razzaq ignored, it will help the team to have a good all rounder with some experience in the playing eleven.

It will be interesting to see how the former Pakistan captain plays under older less experienced Misbah, and if Shoaib will play as vice captain or just a member of the team. Hope the tour concludes without any controversies. The body language of the team members will tell the story, it should be a relatively relaxed tour. Best of luck to both teams and maybe Zimbabwe can pull a rabbit out of the hat and win few matches against relatively less experienced Pakistan side.

Shoaib Malik batting with MB Malik Sher cricket bat now sold in USA under Stealth bat by CE USA

It was a deflated performance by world champions Indian team. Indians could have played lot better but were clearly lacking sting in the bowling department and had problems playing under the seaming English conditions. England has dominated the test series throughout all four tests. While looking at the stats of white washes in the history of Cricket, it looks like most of the times the home teams has been able to achieve the white washes.

Some exceptions are that once mighty West Indies and Australians have achieved this feat on foreign soil against healthy oppositions. Hopefully with the introduction of DRS there will be more losses for the home teams as in the past most of the umpiring blunders used to be against the visitors. It is the first whitewash with DRS in effect. Hats off to English team for playing the best cricket we have seen from them in the recent years.

Cricket was not as popular in America as it is today. Back in late 80's there were no TV channels in America which broad casted any cricket matches at all. Cricket was a rare sight to see in the parks or anywhere else in United States, most of the Americans had no knowledge about the sport. Cricket gear was hard to buy and most of the gear was brought over by visitors as gift to the relatives living in United States.

As of today there are at least three channels in USA broadcasting cricket 24 X 7. Dish network has ESPN 10 Cricket, Willow Cricket and NEO cricket. All three broadcast cricket 24 hours a day. Most of the live international matches get full coverage on one of these channels.

We have recently created a new cricket ball "Seamer", the ball is created for the purpose of training and can be used with soft ball cricket bats. The ball has true bounce similar to normal leather cricket ball. This is an ideal training aid for fast bowlers learning to keep the seam upright while bowling. The ball is constructed with a slightly raised seam which makes the ball deviate after pitching, the bowler has to hit the seam straight on the ground to make the ball cut in or out after pitching. The ball is available in red, white and green colors.  

The reflex and professional tennis ball bats can be used used to play with this ball in parks or concrete surfaces.

Your feedback is very important to us and also to other visitors to our website. Help us improve our site by writing reviews on the products you have purchased from our website. We are open to constructive criticism, we will email you a coupon for your next purchase once we receive the review written by you as a token of our appreciation.

Some very unusual and funny dismissals in cricket. Enjoy the video.

We have recently updated our website with new products for our new brand with fresh stock just arriving from factories. We are sending the new 15% off coupon to all our existing registered users.
 
Please feel free to use it as many times as you like. The promotional offer will be ending soon so please take advantage of this opportunity. We are also sending free MB Malik cricket bat covers with every order of CE USA & MB Malik English willow bats. As always we are still offering free shipping for all orders above $150.00 or more within USA.

New English willow and soft ball cricket bats for CE brand have arrived in our Atlanta warehouse. The bats are now available for sale along with other CE & MB Malik Equipment. We have tested these bats and have found them to be excellent in performance. We are proud to introduce our new cricket equipment range in the United States of America.

Check out our designs for the cricket balls, we are developing a complete range of cricket equipment co-branded with MB Malik. They are known for making the finest cricket equipment worldwide. We expect to unviel the complete range this summer.

Australia 270 for 7 (Clarke 101, Shuvo 3-44) beat Bangladesh 210 for 5 (Tamim 62, Shakib 51) by 60 runs

Michael Clarke passed his first test as Australia's full-time captain, leading from the front with a century before his bowlers backed up the effort to complete a 60-run win over Bangladesh. Australia have a 1-0 lead in the three-match series and while the results might seem inconsequential after the World Cup, the subplot of Clarke taking over the leadership from Ricky Ponting has created some interest.

This is one of the most astonishing and mind boggling news coming out of Pakistan cricket camp. Abdul Razzaq has not been used by Pakistan in recent years to his fill potential. In world cup he batted at number 8 spot not sure why ? He is more of a balanced batsman and a very useful bowler (all rounder) and have won games for Pakistan from hopeless situations.

 He is one of those players who can turn the match upside down single handedly. Thumbs down to people making that decision, players like him and Azhar Mehmood are gems which have been wasted by PCB. Give him few tournaments and bat him at 3 or 4 in any form of cricket and you will see the results. I feel sorry to see him dropped he has lot of cricket left in him and hope that he will make is way back in the team soon.

Congratulations to India on winning the 2011 World Cup. Well played and a very well deserved victory. Our very warm well wishes to Indian fans on winning the prestigious trophy. Well played Sri Lanka and great run to the final of world cup 2011.

Congratulations to India for making the finals, well played both teams.
India 260 for 9 (Tendulkar 85, Riaz 5-46) beat Pakistan 231 (Misbah 56) by 29 runs

Play of the Day: Hats off to Ashish Nehra for not claiming the bumped catch of Shaid Afridi, a great show of sportsmenship in the semi final of the world cup 2011.

Does home teams have advantage over visitors ?
Are home teams in more pressure when performing in front of their home crowd ?

It is complete rubbish that home teams are in bigger pressure to perform when playing on their familiar grounds and in front of supportive crowds. It is a psychological tactic used by visitors to pressurize the home team. Just look at the statistics on the home teams a large percentage of wins are at home as opposed to losses which are in foreign soil. One may argue the case about the world cup in which no home team has won it yet.

The reason is that there are many countries participating in world cup and the home teams were simply not good enough to win the tournament. On tomorrow's game India have advantage over Pakistan in terms of the crowd support and familiar conditions. If Pakistan wins this then it will be a mega effort defying all odds. We wish that it is a clean friendly and competitive game and bring people of both countries closer to each other, no matter whoever wins. Our best of luck to both teams. 

With world cup 2011 nearing its final games, we wish all the teams participating the best of luck. India and Pakistan Semi final promises to be a cracker. It will be great to watch both teams play after a long time.

South Africa and New Zealand game is turning out to be a thriller, looks like will go the wire. The next quarter final game between Srilanka and England will be evenly matched contest and will be fun to watch.

Cricket Equipment USA has also announced the creation of  first cricket equipment Brand CE® in USA. The company is expected to launch a complete range of cricket equipment by the end of July 2011. The product range will have newly co-branded (CE & MB Malik) bats, gloves, pads and other related equipment used for professional and leisure play.

Here are the designs of our new bats, you can also pre-order these historic cricket bats before they go on sale. Email as at info@cricketequipmentusa.com if you are interested in pre ordering.

Hard Ball Cricket Bat Designs

Tennis/Tapeball Cricket Bat Designs

Sir Richard Hadlee from New Zealand one of the best fast bowler of all times. A tribute to Richard Hadlee from ESPN legends of Cricket.

Ihsan cricket bats and other equipment will be on the opening scene of CBS Blue Bloods show to be aired on Jan. 14 at 10 PM EST on CBS. Check it out, looking forward to the show.

China is making a bid to host its first major international cricket event by showing interest in staging the 2012 Asia Cup in Guangzhou, the venue that hosted the first-ever Asian Games cricket tournament in November.

The Asian Cricket Council (ACC) chief executive, Syed Ashraful Huq, told ESPNcricinfo that one of the upshots of the Asian Games was that the Chinese Cricket Association had "expressed its interest" in hosting the 2012 Asia Cup. "If our ACC board agrees, China will have its first full-fledged, major international tournament," he said.

The ACC board will meet on December 12 in Dhaka to decide on the venue for the Asia Cup. The choice is among Guangzhou, Dhaka and either Dubai or Abu Dhabi. "If you ask me where it should go, I don't know, my board would have to decide," Huq said. "But it would be good if it is played in a non-traditional place".

Moving to a new venue, according to Huq, "enhances the profile of the place, creates cricket awareness. You create a new market in the new place." There were, he said, "no new things" to be created by playing the tournament in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. "If you have the missionary view of taking cricket out and getting to new markets or new areas, then you should go to new markets, new areas."

The cricket tournament in the Asian Games was held at the Guangdong University of Technology (GDUT), where the ground has an 80-metre boundary and seven pitches that were laid out six months ago. Four of those were used to host 30 Twenty20 matches during the Asian Games. Huq said the venue had been well-received and would host three of the ICC's World Cricket League Division Three games in January.

According to Huq, PCB chairman Ijaz Butt had been astonished by the quality of the GDUT ground and its facilities and said it could be a venue for one of Pakistan's offshore international games. "It was just an initial reaction after seeing the new ground," Huq said. "He [Butt] just turned to me and said why can't play our Test matches here?"

India were "sorely missed" at the Asian Games, Huq said, and the BCCI's decision to not send a team was at odds with the agreement made by the four Asian Test-playing nations that they would send their "best available" team as opposed to the best possible side to the event.

Huq said the decision to make a pitch for cricket's inclusion in the Asian Games had been led by Sharad Pawar, who during his tenure as BCCI president (2005-2008) was also president of the ACC. Both Sri Lanka and Bangladesh sent their A-teams to Guangzhou. Sri Lanka fielded a few former Test players like Jehan Mubarak and Malinga Bandara, and Bangladesh was captained by Mohammad Ashraful.

"India could have sent their best available team, obviously the best possible team could not play because they were playing New Zealand. It is not expected of them to send it (their best possible team)", Huq said and hoped the Indians would turn up for the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon.

Huq denied that, by distancing itself from the Asian Games, the BCCI had decided to move away from its regional bloc. "I don't think this is the case, but since India is the commercial powerhouse, they are busy. Everybody wants to cash in on India. It is not only the Asians who want to do it but Australia, England, the South Africans, West Indies, New Zealand, everybody wants to do it. I think Asia is still a strong bloc, obviously led by India. It is expected of India to take the lead."

Sri Lanka v West Indies, 1st Test, Galle, 2nd day - November 16, 2010
Sri Lanka 54 for 1 trail West Indies 580 for 9 dec (Gayle 333, Nash 64, Darren Bravo 58, Barath 50, Mendis 6-169) by 526 runs

A mesmerising late spell from Ajantha Mendis was not enough to overshadow a Chris Gayle triple-century on the second day of the first Test in Galle, as the West Indies opener's 333 took the visitors to a daunting first innings total of 580 for 9 declared. Gayle etched his name in history when he became just the fourth batsman after Bradman, Lara and Sehwag to make two 300-plus scores in Tests, and celebrated the milestone not by lying down on the pitch as he did yesterday, but by kneeling with his arms aloft, grateful that he had given his side the perfect platform to pursue their first ever Test win on Sri Lankan soil.

The greatest fast bowlers the world has ever seen gathered in Australia in 1979 to compete in speeds and accuracy competition. Hosted by Richie Beanud.

One of the most amazing performances in Cricketing history. Australia played a series of supertests in 1971-72 against a "World 11" led by Gary Sobers. In the second supertest at Perth, Lillee grabbed 8/29 to dismiss the World 11 for 59. Highlights and commentary. FYI, This match is also memorable for a superb century by Rohan Kanhai in the second innings.

Rare footage of Don Bradman showing how to play cricket shots the orthodox way. A great trip down the memory lane and a reminder of the golden days how cricket used to be.

Learn how to swing the cricket ball from The Swing King Wasim Akram.

The other option is to try these Swing King Cricket Balls to achieve the swing like a Pro.

Our ideal team for Pakistan for ODI's and T20's
1. Imran Nazir
2. Shahzaib hasan
3. Abdul Razzak
4. Umar Akmal
5. Azhar Mahmood (Captain)
6. Shahid Afridi
7. Kamran Akmal (Wicket Keeper)
8. Rana Naveed
9. Umar Gul
10. Shoaib Akhtar
11. Saeed Ajmal

Reserves:
Mohammad Hafeez, Mohammad Sami, Zulqarnain Haider, Hasan Raza

Sri Lanka 9 for 243 (Mathews 77*, Malinga 56, Doherty 4-46) beat Australia 8 for 239 (Hussey 71*, Perera 5-46) by 1 wicket




Angelo Mathews and Lasith Malinga produced one of the great one-day international fightbacks to clinch an improbable victory for Sri Lanka, extending Australia's losing streak to six international games since July. The visitors seemed destined for a humiliating loss when they crashed to 8 for 107 chasing 240, but Mathews and Malinga kept fighting, spurred on by noisy support from a crowd dominated by Sri Lankan fans.

They compiled the highest ninth-wicket partnership in ODI history, beating a 27-year-old record set by Kapil Dev and Syed Kirmani at the 1983 World Cup, and the 132-run stand left Australia's confidence in tatters.

Sri Lanka's victory was the seventh occasion that a team has gone on to win by one wicket in matches played in Australia.

The new updated design of our website will cater to retail and wholesale customers. There are additional new features such as the inclusion of the gift card and promotional discount coupons. We are exicited to offer autentics cricket brands to our customers in United States of America. The site will be updated with new products and useful information related to cricket and cricket equipment. Register with us to keep informed about the latest additions and upcoming promotions to our website.
We are currently carrying from

• Ihsan
• Gunn & Moore
• Gray Nicolls
• Kookabura

on our retail site. For resellers we currently have Ihsan and Gunn & Moore. Resellers will have to be registered on our website and approved to get the wholesale prices for the products.  Once the account is approved, resellers will be able to buy online as they will see the wholesale prices once logge in. There are minimum order limits for each manufacturer for wholesale accounts.

Learn about our wholesale reseller program for cricket equipment.