I woke this morning with an increasingly unusual feeling in my cricketing belly – one of genuine anticipation

Confectionery Stallers, the waiting is at an end

Tomorrow will bring the long-awaited announcement of numbers 7 to 11 in the Confectionery Stall Post-1981 All-Time Dullest World XI, putting tedious cricketers and lovers of tedious cricket out of their misery at last

The ICC’s much-maligned Best-Ever Test Match ratings, which have provoked typhoons of outrage and howls of misunderstanding across the cricketing universe, have fired the millennia-old debate about how best to assess a cricketer’s quality

Matthew Hayden, the Brisbane Bludgeoner himself, has become the latest of the Australian old guard to succumb to the inescapable tentacles of time

Andy Zaltzman has unlocked the key to the Middle East crisis: pitch invasions

Greetings Confectionery Stallers, and welcome to the first instalment of the Confectionery Stall’s Ashes result prediction blogs, which will pepper the year from now until the final over of the series

As my wife gave birth to our second child, on the floor of our bathroom, I, Andy Zaltzman, serial dropper of dollies, sitters and regulation four-quarter chances on the cricket field, had caught the one that mattered

Some statistical pointers to how England will perform in the Test series, generated with a combustible cocktail of fact and inappropriate mathematics

With their total lack of preparation, chaotic travel arrangements, almost complete absence of public expectation and rampantly in-form opposition, it now seems inconceivable that England can do anything other than win

If you are allergic to or intolerant of cricket statistics, please either take an anti-histamine before reading this, or destroy your computer

There has been an understandable concentration on the negative implications of some or all of England's cricketers not returning to India for the Test series following the Mumbai terrorist attack

Andy Zaltzman looks at Duckworth-Lewis, "one of humankind’s greatest scientific breakthroughs", but questions whether it needs a revamp

The prospect of the final three one-day internationals between England and India has, like accountancy and competitive grouting, failed to capture the public imagination in Britain

The second match between India and England was noteworthy for two things

The Confectionery Stall has long been a champion of faster over-rates, ever since its very first blog five days ago

Welcome to The Confectionery Stall, my new blog about the world of cricket as it progresses through the barmiest phase in its illustrious history

As I write, England and India have just embarked on a seven-match marathon of one-day internationals, as a prelude to an embarrassingly short two-match travesty of a Test series