New Zealand fans will have to paint their roofs this summer without the sound of cricket commentary in the background. Radio Sport has announced it will not be broadcasting live commentary on matches from the Plunket Shield, New Zealand’s domestic first-class competition. Instead they will have someone provide updates on the matches from online scores. Radio Sport will continue to broadcast live commentary from the domestic one-day and Twenty20 competitions. The move to cancel live coverage of the Plunket Shield has already caused a stir among New Zealand cricket fans, and an online petition has been started to change the radio network’s minds.

“Cricket is a sport that is made for radio commentary; it is the perfect backdrop to that other great NZ tradition of painting house roofs. Can someone please think of the roofs,” a petition on ipetitions.com reads. Dallas Gurney, the general manager of talk programming for The Radio Network, said listeners would not miss the action from the Plunket Shield since there would be updates. "Instead of running extended periods of commentary and crossing between the multiple games, we are going to have a commentator in a central commentary position providing updates on the games," Gurney said. “It is as much about providing the best possible coverage for our Radio Sport audience as it is any money that we might save by not having a commentator at every single Plunket Shield game.”

Here’s a googly Pakistan cricket can do without: football is casting its eyes on the space all but abdicated by top-flight cricket in the country. Manchester United, the world’s largest football club, has signed a partnership deal with Zong, one of Pakistan’s largest mobile-phone companies, to supply exclusive content to its subscribers. It’s a deal similar to those Manchester United has in many countries but it’s the first time top-level football has moved towards what has always been seen as a cricket and hockey country.

"Ten years ago, the football market was small, the game was dying,” the Daily Telegraph quoted Rizwan Akhter, Zong's director of advertising and promotions, as saying. "But over the past few years, things have changed. Every other person, especially in urban areas, is associated with one club or another … Most of the cricket fans are football followers as well. And the primary reason for the increase in the popularity of football is the demise and turmoil in cricket."

The huge advantage, Akhter says, is that in Pakistan – as in neighbouring India – top European football is available on TV almost free. Maybe the Pakistan football team will have better luck with its keepers than the cricket team has of late.

Sachin Tendulkar’s passion for Formula One is well known and as India hosts its first Grand Prix in Delhi at the end of the month, he could likely be waving the chequered flag. When Brazil staged its first Grand Prix in 2002, the football legend Pele was given the same honour.

The organisers, Jaypee Sports, have put Tendulkar’s name forward to the F1 management, who will take the final call. “Sachin's love for motorsport is well known, and he is also the biggest sporting icon of the country,” Jaypee's vice-president of communications, Askari Zaidi, told the Hindustan Times. “It’s only logical that we nominate him.”

Australia seamer Ryan Harris faced an unusual problem when he turned out for his local club Toombul in a Brisbane grade match. The Courier Mail reported that Harris, on his comeback from injury, had to strain to pitch the ball up in his opening over. After a series of edges failed to reach the slips, the pitch was inspected closely by the rookie groundsman who realised that he had marked it too long.

"He had mucked up his tape measure and the pitch was 22 metres long rather than the normal 22 yards long,'' Harris said. The error translated to a near two-metre addition to the strip, since 22 yards corresponds to a little over 20 metres.

"It had to be re-marked and the game had to be restarted," Harris said. "Never in my life have I been a part of anything like that on a cricket field, or even seen anything like that. It was so funny but it was also bloody embarrassing for the club."

The India-England limited-overs series will not be employing Hot Spot, so the technology’s suppliers have found a different sporting event to pack their cameras off to: Baseball's World Series, due to begin on October 19. The military grade thermal imaging cameras will be used in the USA by broadcaster Fox Sports, on an experimental basis.

“The only reason that we can come over [to the USA] is because we've got spare cameras that aren't now going to India,” Australian Warren Brennan, who supplies the cameras for cricket, told the New Zealand Herald. Baseball, though, is likely to tap the technology’s entertainment potential rather using it to adjudicate the umpires’ decisions.

“A nice big home run off the middle of the bat might come up fantastically well, and the Americans might think that's better than sliced bread,” Brennan said. “It's all about their impression, really. The Americans do tend to look at things more from an entertainment-type perspective of trying to build things up and make things, you know, big and sort of interesting.” Besides, he said, he’s looking to working on baseball as “they’re the sort of clients that we love to work for, that support us 100%”. Wonder what cricket’s top brass would have to say to that?

After a winless, demoralising tour of England, India’s cricketers might need a little reminding that they lifted a World Cup only a few months ago, right? Well, their kit sponsors have it covered. Starting with the one-day series against England, which begins in Hyderabad on October 14, India will wear jerseys with three stars positioned above the BCCI logo. The stars denote India’s three landmark victories – the 1983 and 2011 50-overs World Cups and the 2007 World Twenty20.

Of course, some players have shown their appreciation for the gesture. “I feel really proud, for me the three stars on the jersey represent what the Indian team is today and how much they have achieved,” batsman Virat Kohli was quoted as saying in DNA India. “I feel really honoured to be a part of a team that has won three World Cups.”

It has stood since W.G Grace was still plying his trade as a wily 40-something cricketer, but age and infirmity may soon catch up with a Victorian cricket pavilion in Buckinghamshire, which has been named as one of the 10 most endangered buildings in England and Wales. The Bletchley Cricket Pavilion was built in the 1890s but has been separated from its cricket pitch since it was sold by Bletchley Grammar School and is now separated from the playing area by a large hedge. Thieves have stolen bricks and timber from the structure, weakening it further, and the Victorian Society has said that it "needs urgent work to reverse years of decay". The society said it hoped the building, which is in the process of being sold, would find a new owner who was prepared to incorporate the pavilion into any new development, although it’s unclear if the structure will ever serve as a functioning cricket pavilion again.

Ever longed for a quick fix for all your debt issues? Former Pakistan captain Imran Khan found a unique solution: betting tips. In his new book, Pakistan: A Personal History, Imran talks about using his vast cricketing knowledge to help his brother-in-law, Ben Goldsmith, place bets on an England-South Africa Test; in exchange, Imran got some money to help clear his political party Tehreek-e-Insaf’s debts.

“It took me a year to clear the debts the party had incurred during the [2002 parliamentary] elections,” he wrote. “I cleared our last remaining debts in an unusual way; I was with my family in England, and my brother-in-law, Ben Goldsmith, kept asking me about what would happen in an England-South Africa Test match.

“I discovered his interest came from his 'spread-betting' on the game. I decided to watch the match, and that every pound he made … would go towards clearing my party's debt. I have never gambled in my life and have never understood its attraction, but for the sake of clearing my party's debts I watched the Test match with Ben for the next two days, telling him what to do and when.”

And yes, the pair was quite successful – so successful, in fact, that the bookie’s interest was piqued. “At one point the bookie asked, ‘Mr Goldsmith, you don't happen to be sitting with your brother-in-law, do you?’”

Archers head out of the pavilion at Lord's © Getty Images

You’ve probably heard several cricketers gushing about being on the Honours Boards at Lord’s and heard all about the heaps of tradition behind the ground. Could the hallowed turf be special to a Korean archer though? Now, with the English domestic season complete, it is.

South Korean Olympic gold-medallist Im Dong-hyun broke his own world record at Lord’s on Monday, in an archery tournament designed to be a test run ahead of next year’s Olympics. In September, Lord’s had been designated as the Olympics archery venue. The archers will have to shoot over the square, with the famous pavilion as the backdrop. Touches of William Tell at the village square then?

While Graeme Smith was making his comeback from injury in a club match, his opening batting partner suffered a reversal of fortune. Zaheer Lorgat, son of ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat, had an enjoyable time at the crease with the South African Test captain, but a nasty time in the field.

He dived to save a boundary and landed against the sightscreen, cutting his knee open in the process. Dr Shuaib Manjra, who is head of CSA’s medical committee, and was attending the match to assess Smith’s fitness, found himself with another job to do. He took Lorgat to the hospital and saw to it that he received a dozen stitches.

Lorgat said his son was in severe pain having sustained quite a big gash, but enjoyed the experience of being the in the same XI as Smith. “He was very excited to play with Smith and it shows what the big names can do to inspire young players,” Lorgat senior said.

If cricket purists raise their eyebrows at South African players entering England squads, they’re probably shaving them off at the thought of Jonty Rhodes, one of South Africa’s biggest post-Apartheid sporting heroes, entering the Bigg Boss house in India. Bigg Boss is India’s version of the reality show Big Brother, and places a group of celebrities in a house where they live for a certain number of days with no connection to the outside world. The guests are largely Indian but in recent times the producers have tried to include foreign celebrities with the actress Pamela Anderson spending three days in the house last season.

This season Rhodes could be joined in the house by Colombian pop star Shakira and boxer Mike Tyson – and, closer home, by former India cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu, whose end-career fielding earned him the nickname Jonty Singh. “I am sure that we two reasonable fielders will gel just fine on the show,” Rhodes joked in an interview with the Hindustan Times. He is one of the few characters left in the game of cricket, either on or off the field, so it should be an entertaining time.” Rhodes, currently in India with the Mumbai Indians for the Champions League Twenty20, said he hoped to learn Hindi during his stint in the Bigg Brother house. There’s no confirmation yet, though, on how long Rhodes will spend in the house or what tasks he will be made to perform – Pamela Anderson had to learn to dance to a Bollywood song.

How do you say 'leg before wicket' in Dutch? Is there a German word for byes? These were perhaps just some of the problems ICC Europe and the MCC would have faced while translating the Laws of Cricket into seven European languages. The 2010 edition of the Laws are now available in French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Italian and German.

The project was undertaken to help promote cricket in Europe, but took longer than expected because there were several terms, taken for granted as part of the language by cricket-lovers, completely untranslatable in other languages. “We initially underestimated the complexity involved with translating the Laws into so many different languages as many of the cricket terms just did not exist,” Richard Holdsworth, the ICC regional development manager, Europe, said. The Laws are also being translated into Romanian and Finnish.

Glenn McGrath, the man who never gave England a chance when he was playing, has admitted that they deserve the No. 1 Test ranking and has even stopped short of predicting a 5-0 win for Australia in the next Ashes.

“As much as it kills me to say that England are the number one in the world, I think they actually deserve it,” he told TalkSport. "They’ve got a great bowling attack, it’s very consistent, and they are doing an exceptional job. And the rest of the team is working well around that.”

We’ll see if he’s still saying the same thing in a couple of years time ahead of the 2013 Ashes series.

Twenty-three of the world’s greatest living cricketers will be gathering together at Lord’s on Wednesday for a one-off lunch, organised by the Lord’s Taverners, in celebration of the art of fast bowling.

Among the attendees will be Sir Richard Hadlee, Curtly Ambrose, Alan Davidson, Glenn McGrath, Courtney Walsh, Jeff Thomson, Andy Roberts, Clive Rice, Colin Croft, Mike Procter, Devon Malcolm, Makhaya Ntini and Kapil Dev.

Several of the bowlers (McGrath, Ambrose, Walsh, Malcolm and Ntini) will also be visiting Lambeth school in the shadow of The Oval. Some of the West Indian heroes will speak with the kids, in a school where the demographic is 95% black, about their experience of access to sport in London and have a coaching session with Cricket 4 Change. The Lord’s Taverners will donate some cricket kit to the school.