Category: Limited Over

England’s Test batsmen are often accused of making starts but failing to convert them into centuries. Generally, blame is placed upon the proliferation of limited overs cricket. Today, England again lost an ODI against Australia, and again a number of their batsmen established themselves, only to lose their wickets.

With Joe Denly being the latest England cricketer injured during a football warmup, you wonder just what is going on. England’s disastrous first morning in the Ashes Test at Headingley was prompted by an injury to Matt Prior, yet they do not seem to have learnt their lesson.

England gave Ireland the narrow beating of their lives yesterday, winning by 3 runs under the Duckworth/Lewis method. It took a debutant and a part-time spinner to make the game safe, but we should expect nothing less in an England 50-over match.

Forty-over cricket is considered so important by the ECB that they have decided to go one step further than simply scrapping their 50-over competition to protect it. Now, the ECB is asking the ICC to change the international 50-over format on their behalf.

Increasingly, we hear about the bleak future of test cricket, with Chris Gayle’s recent comments being the most outspoken by a player so far. However, the amount of speculation tells us that people care enough about test cricket to do something to preserve it’s place in the game. We do not hear the same concerns over the future of 50-over cricket.

Knowing as we did that West Indies’ players weren’t too keen on being here, it is no surprise that England took the ODI series 2-0. And we didn’t learn much about the players that we didn’t already know.

Many had written off Sussex’ season before it had even begun. Today they reached the semi-final of the Friends Provident Trophy, beating Somerset by six wickets.

In Yorkshire it has a tendency to rain. Every now and again. Yorkshire CCC knows this, therefore, they decided to spend £600,000 of ECB funding installing a new drainage system at Headingley, which they didn’t finish until April. Today, the weather said “oh yeah, well drain this”. To which Headingley replied “nay lad, not worth t’bother”.

He was off the field on the last day of the recent test. We were told (on TMS) that he was feeling “queasy”. Perhaps not.

For England, this may well be a blessing in disguise where the rest of the summer is concerned.