Memories are made of this

Christmas is coming. The geese are getting fat, the streets are full and frantic, and journalists everywhere are busy compiling lists of things that happened in the past 12 months. Here is the Spin's selection, an amble through my most cherished memories of 2011. Most of them seem to have come from the World Cup, but that was where I watched most of my cricket this year, and I'm sure you will all help me fill in the blanks and bits I have missed with your own choices.

"They came in their thousands to form an English corner of a foreign field for the climax, a day of days in the history of the England team, and another one of abject misery for a once-proud Australian team fallen on hard times. Not even the snap showers washing in to interrupt play, and a flatness to the team on the field, could deny them a third overwhelming victory, which came, by an innings and 83 runs, at 11.56, four minutes before the shipping forecast, and just as Billy the Barmy Trumpeter was playing a poignant Last Post for the demise of Australian cricket."

England win the match by an innings and 83 runs, and the series by three Tests to one. Where were you when the final wicket fell?

Sachin and Strauss make point and counterpoint

Bengaluru, 27 February, England v India

It was the noise that stayed with me, so loud that the windows of the press box seemed to rattle and throb in their fittings. The shouts of rapturous adoration that accompanied each and every one of Sachin Tendulkar's 120 runs carried up into the floodlit sky, where they were taken up by millions of others across India. England had 339 to make, and were without a prayer of getting there. And then in came Andrew Strauss. His 158 was the only century he scored in international cricket this year, but what a knock it was, one of the very finest innings ever played by an Englishman in a one-day international. And yet England were still left needing 14 from the final over. A single off the final ball left them with a tie. It was a blockbuster of a match, with a cast of millions and a plot stuffed with preposterous twists.

O'Brien hits the fastest century in World Cup history

Bengaluru, 2 March, England v Ireland

Four days later England proved they could do farce as well as drama, when they were humiliated by Ireland at that very same venue. Ireland, chasing 328, were 106 for four when Kevin O'Brien walked to the crease. He had spent the last season playing for Railway Union (no, me neither) in the Leinster Premier League. But then, as he said between his disbelieving chuckles in his press conference after the game, he tends to play the same way no matter what the stage or situation: "I used to try to play like that in the back garden with my brother Niall." The English fans in the ground and the press box hardly noticed his first six. His second raised a few laughs. His third provoked a few patronising suggestions that it was good to see the Irish show some pluck. By his fourth brows were starting to furrow. By the time he hit his fifth and sixth we were all sitting slack-jawed, rubbernecking at the carnage unfolding in front of us.

Sachin and Sehwag's shootout with South Africa

Nagpur, 12 March, India v South Africa

Until I looked up the scorecard it had actually slipped my mind that India contrived to lose this match by three wickets. Some feat that, given that they won the toss and had scored 267 for one before their innings was 40 overs old. But it was the first 17 overs of the match that stand out. Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag produced some of the most gloriously swashbuckling strokes ever seen on a cricket pitch. It was the calibre of the opening attack they were facing that made it so special: Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel. It was the kind of heavyweight clash, resonant with thunder and fury and violence, that cricket so often seems to lack in the modern era. Steyn's first ball was 94.8mph, full and straight. Sehwag whipped it over mid-on for four. It was a shot that went straight through South Africa's bow, not over the top of it. Steyn's first four overs cost 34, Morkel's 35. India's 100 came off 72 balls.

Last memories of an old pro

Dhaka, 25 March, New Zealand v South Africa

Three-quarters of the way through this quarter-final, there was only one man in Mirpur who still thought New Zealand were going to win it.

That was Peter Roebuck. Given that Australia were playing India in Ahmedabad, 1,132 miles away, Roebuck shouldn't have been at this match at all. But he had made a miscalculation in his itinerary. Faced with the prospect of spending a week in Dhaka to cover a match that wasn't relevant to their job, most correspondents would have caught the first plane out. But, being the man he was, Roebuck decided to stay in Bangladesh anyway because he had never been there before and he wanted to make up his own mind about the country and its cricket. I distinctly remember him standing on the terrace of the press box in his straw hat, holding court to a gaggle of Bangladeshi journos who were hanging on his every word. ("Please Mr Roebuck," we liked to think they were asking him, "what was it really like to play with Colin Dredge?"). In the match itself South Africa were 108 for two chasing 221, with Jacques Kallis on 47 and AB de Villiers on 25. "Well, this is all over," I told Roebuck as we stood in the dinner queue. "I wouldn't be so sure about that," he replied. Of course he was right. He flashed me a quick grin when I told him so later on. It was the last time we spoke.

Afridi's sportsmanship

Mohali, 30 March, India v Pakistan

The "mother of all matches" was played out up in the Punjab. The tiny stadium, encircled by 10,000 army and police personnel, was in a temporary no-fly zone, guarded by anti-aircraft missiles and the fighter jets on stand-by stationed at nearby Ambala air force base.

Mohali was a nest of VIPers, with so many grandees flying in that the local airport issued an edict that the private jets would only be allowed to pick up and drop off, and had to be parked at Delhi instead. Playing in front of the prime ministers of both countries, India beat Pakistan by 29 runs. And after all the hype and hoopla, ballyhoo and brouhaha, the Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi sat down, smiled, and said simply: "I want to congratulate the Indian team and the whole nation. I think they deserved to win."

The ultimate captain's innings

Mumbai, 2 April, India v Sri Lanka

Did MS Dhoni really promote himself up the order in the World Cup final? And was he really in the thick of some of the sorriest form of his career? And did he really then score 91 off 79 balls? And is it possible that he actually finished the match with a six to win his team the World Cup? Or did I just dream all that?

One man and his dog watch one of the greatest Test finishes

Cardiff, 30 May, England v Sri Lanka

Away from the World Cup and into the Test season. It seemed at the time that the summer could hardly have made a gloomier start. After four dreary, dank and damp days in Cardiff, 400 played 496. There were just 51 overs left in the game when the third innings finally started.

What happened next provided two potent reminders: the first was that you can never second-guess Test cricket, and the second was that you cannot underestimate the ability of Andrew Strauss's England team to conjure up extraordinary performances in the most unpromising circumstances. Sri Lanka were 82 all out in 24.4 overs, and England won by an innings.

Sangakkara speaks out

Lord's, 4 July, the MCC Spirit of Cricket lecture

Kumar Sangakkara has scored more international runs than anybody else in the world this year: 2,159 in 48 innings across all three formats, at an average of 49. But he was never more impressive than he was one evening at Lord's in July, when he delivered a speech written in moments stolen between matches, net sessions, and charity work during a miserable sort of tour: "Fans of different races, castes, ethnicities and religions who together celebrate their diversity by uniting for a common national cause. They are my foundation, they are my family. I will play my cricket for them. Their spirit is the true spirit of cricket. With me are all my people. I am Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim and Burgher. I am a Buddhist, a Hindu, a follower of Islam and Christianity. I am today, and always, proudly Sri Lankan."

Dhoni does it himself

Lord's, 22 July, England v India

When my colleague Rob Smyth is really tickled by something he tends to gurgle in amused satisfaction. I, on the other hand, squawk like a strangled parrot. Many of the happiest moments of my cricket-watching life have, oddly enough, come while I've been sitting next to Rob, the two of us gurgling, giggling and squawking as we write over-by-over commentary. We are, as you can imagine, a popular pair with our workmates, who are all trying to get on with the business of producing a newspaper. I'm not sure anything we've seen has ever given Rob and I more delight than the sight of MS Dhoni pacing out his run-up so he could fill in Zaheer Khan's missing overs during the Lord's Test. It epitomised the gulf between the two teams, and presaged the shape of the series to come. But better yet was that it showed, again, the sheer moxie of the man: if something needs doing, best do it yourself.

It was one of the most endearing moments of a remarkable match, which brewed up into a fifth day when the queues stretched all the way around the back streets of St John's Wood.

Cook cuts loose at last

Edgbaston, 12 August, England v India

772 minutes, 544 balls, 294 runs, and then he decides to slap a wide one to point. Oh Alastair.

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