LMS in the Media

The unnatural sight of continual England success and the explosion of the Twenty20 format has been in stark contrast with match-fixing scandals and dwindling crowds at Test matches. Despite the immense popularity of the shorter form of the game, cricket is still viewed as inaccessible by huge numbers of people who simply do not have the time to spend hours on end fielding at third man in what many deem a wasted afternoon. Last Man Stands is cricket's equivalent of five-a-side football (although LMS is actually eight-a-side)...

Welcome to 'The Fire Inside' a fly on the wall documentary that is following and tracking the Southern Cricket team throughout their 3rd season in the LMS competition. Outside of the IPL the Last Man Stands competition is held in high regard. Many who have played in it liken it to running the Antarctic marathon or even the Great Wall of China marathon. Having picked up the title in their first season, Southern were hot favorites to take out the championship in their second season but failed. This is the journey of a team reuniting to get the cup back in the skippers cave...

Despite fewer deliveries, fewer fielders and a few unfamiliar rules cricketers are flocking to Last Man Stands. The novel format of the game, which features five-ball overs and only eight players per side, began in England in 2005 and has expanded rapidly since then. Cricketer Rob Stevenson played in one of the early matches in London. He was so impressed by the quickfire nature of the game that he moved to Sydney in 2009 to set up an Australian version...

ABC TV interview about how Last Man Stands T20 cricket is helping more disadvantaged people access the sport, including a discussion on global charity efforts such as the Maasai Cricket Warriors and the Johannesburg township team, as well as efforts to raise money through the Australian leagues to help people with disabilities access the sport.

As fans of leather on willow bemoan the lacklustre performance of the national side, many are turning to a simpler form of our summer sporting code. Simon Day reports on the Last Man Stands phenomenon. Lying somewhere between a backyard bash and Twenty-20, Last Man Stands (LMS) represents cricket's latest makeover and it is quickly becoming a global trend...

They have close to 17,000 players worldwide. The participants have global rankings; it has been played at Lord's - and yet the players of Last Man Stands cricket are never happier than in their shorts with a beer and barbecue at Auckland's Domain. Welcome to the latest version of 'quick cricket' for the time-poor but enthusiasm-rich grassroots player who can spare only a couple of hours before the call of the amber liquid and the hot coals gets too much...

Jeremy Casey and his LMS team, Dreadlock Holiday CC, are interviewed on Sky Sports TV show - Cricket AM. Casey is one of the top LMS players in the world, averaging 99 with the bat at a strike rate of close to 200!!

In northern Kenya, a most unlikely cricket team has emerged with extremely high hopes both on and off the field. For Kenya's Maasai warriors, cricket is more than a game; it's a vehicle which could make the difference between life and death. Africa correspondent Ginny Stein caught up with the team when they touched down in South Africa...

Mnr. Bjorn Briggs (34) het nog altyd ’n passie vir krieket gehad. Hy en sy vennoot, mnr. Wayne Greeve, wat op skool saam vir die eerste span krieket gespeel het, het daarvan gedroom om vir Suid­Afrika krieket te speel. Briggs sê egter hulle het vinnig besef dit gaan nie gebeur nie ennadat albei hul universiteitstudie voltooi het, het hulle die pad Enge­land toe gevat vir ’n paar jaar.

WIN News report about Tradies you can't trust's triumph at the 2011 Australian National Championships, on the South Coast of NSW. Tradies beat Power House from Melbourne in a one-sided final to book their tickets to the 2012 World Championships in Cape Town!

It's an even more supercharged version of Twenty20 cricket. A revolution where eight-man teams do battles with the 'last man stands' rule imported from the backyard and double-plays from baseball. A worldwide phenomenon that allows players in different hemispheres to compare statistics online. And it's coming to the Illawarra in September...

Punters no longer have to secure a place in the annual IPL auction to join in the T20 circus, thanks to the arrival of Last Man Stands cricket... Cricket lost me (though it appears to have moved on). But things may have been different had Last Man Stands cricket been about - a 20 over competition being played played out in Australia's metropolitan city centres which trades on the slap-dash, big-bash nature of T20 cricket, and the punters' desire to get to the pub...

Five balls an over, eight people per side, extras worth three runs and a ‘double play’ rule where both batsmen can be out off the same ball. What in the name of WG Grace is all this? This is Last Man Stands, the latest format of a game that’s gone through more changes in the past decade than it has in the past two centuries. Primarily played in parks in the early evening, the game is growing in popularity among a large group of enthusiastic players keen to get back into the game.

Most people do not know that Mayfield cricketer Mitchell Barry is the world's No.2 bowler. What is nearly as unknown is the format of cricket the 20-year old excels in - Last Man Stands Twenty20. Last week, Barry, who is Australia's No.1 bowler, moved into second spot on the world rankings after taking 1-24 off four overs for Reccas against Wallsend Sporties. In 17 matches of LMS T20, the left-arm quick has taken 26 wickets at 10.46...

Admit it, You’ve dreamt of hitting the winning run or taking the deciding wicket at Lord’s. But we can’t all be Andrew Strauss or Stuart Broad. What we can do, whether we bat, bowl or a bit of both, is play the game for fun. And the England and Wales Cricket Board is supporting two terrific initiatives to help those with busy lives feed their cricketing obsession for a couple of hours, either on a summer’s eve or winter’s day, on a village green, in a sports hall – or at Lord’s..

More than 130 uniform-clad cricketers from around Australia and New Zealand competed vigorously in Centennial Park last weekend and it wasn't just social cricket. It was the Australasian Champions League, the pinnacle of the Last Man Stands competition - a global amateur Twenty20 cricket organisation that runs weekly leagues in South Africa, Dubai, London, New Zealand and Australia...

I'd heard about Last Man Stands before, and not been that bothered. Eight-a0side? Doubleplays wehre you can take a catch and run a man out, all in one move? The next batsman umpiring at square-leg with his pads? Five-ball overs? Do me a favour... Still, I'm always up for a game, and so on a Monday night in June I found myself wearing a red shirt in London's Finsbury Park, batting for a team called Corpus Old Boys. I'd been roped in at the last minute. Three hours, a few hits and one arse-nipper of a game later, I was officially hooked...