We had a number of bits of news released last week including the centrally contracted players for the next 12 months and the squad to go to the West Indies to play for mega-money. There are no real surprises in the Twenty20 squad if you’ve been watching the recent ODI’s and that’s probably a good thing. The players then showed that they could play together as a unit well, and they are all good Twenty20 players so there was no need to bring in specialists such as Graham Napier (even though he has now injured himself playing for Essex).

The layout for the Stanford competition week looks pretty good, building up to the main event between England and the Super Stars on November 1st. There is a round robin type event including Middlesex as they won the Twenty20 this summer, and it should hopefully provide some entertaining cricket. When the domestic West Indian Twenty20 took place they used bizarre looking black cricket bats which I hope we won’t be seeing – I’m all for innovation but that is too far!

October 25: Stanford Super Stars v Trinidad and Tobago
October 26: England v Middlesex
October 27: Trinidad and Tobago v Middlesex
October 28: England v Trinidad and Tobago
October 29: Stanford Super Stars v Middlesex
November 1: Stanford Super Stars v England

I’ve shown the match schedule above – I’m not sure if the games leading up to the monster money final have any ridiculous prize fees to be won, or if the other teams are just getting a good lump sum for the whole thing, but I’m sure they won’t be out of pocket…

England v Middlesex will be an intriguing tie – on paper it will look a bit silly who should win (England, of course), but the Middlesexians (their new nickname from me) will be fired up to prove everyone wrong. I take it that Shah will be playing for England rather than his county, so that could be a very interesting matchup!