User:Deanolad94/sandbox

The Middle Stump is a humorous blog and website covering all forms of cricket from international to club level. Described as "the doosra of blogs" their work is very different from most cricket writers, often writing about the game from a "lad culture" perspective. Founded in March 2012, by Dan Whiting and Liam Kenna, the site was an overnight worldwide sensation gathering 70,000 hits in the first cricket season.

Topics written about on the site include cricket behaviour such as sledging, drinking and poor behaviour on tours, along with some serious articles on the game of cricket..

Their Question and Answer material involves many of the professionals such as Graeme Fowler, Steve Kirby, Matthew Maynard, Jason Gillespie, Gareth Rees, Paul Nixon, Rikki Clarke and Peter Trego amongst others. These tend to be the characters of the game both past and present.

The success of the website led to a book, Cricket Banter being published by The History Press which comes out in April 2013. This is a selection of their interviews, short stories, anecdotes and a guide to the English counties. A donation from the royalties of the book, will be made to Factor 50, a charity involved with melanoma research and for whom Andy Flower, the England cricket coach is an ambassador.

The Middle Stump has now taken John Thorp aka Thorpster onto their writing team along with numerous guest bloggers, and has been promoted via social networking sites by respected journalists such as The Sunday Telegraph's, Steve James and The Guardian's, Mike Selvey.

In September 2012, Whiting and Kenna appeared on Test Match Sofa, commentating on the ICC T20 tournament and the one day game of England versus South Africa.