The first warm up game is taking place out in the West Indies and with club nets starting around now for the new season I thought it might be worth checking out which England players are using what equipment. (I’m fully aware that they may not necessarily be using what is stickered on their bats, but lets pretend they are!)

• Captain Strauss – Managed to top edge the second ball of the tour using his Gray Nicolls Ignite, having moved to these bats from the Predator last summer.
• Vice Captain Cook – Wants to be like the captain and uses a Gray Nicolls Nitro, having previously used a powerbow. Gray Nicolls will be hoping for these two to have some good opening partnerships to give their bats good coverage!
• Ian Bell – Will be scratching round for runs using his new Adidas Incurza, having just followed KP to the Adidas stable. He’d be better off with a light saber.
• Kevin Pietersen – Had a high profile move to Adidas at the back end of last year and will be using the Adidas Pellara in the Caribbean.
• Paul Collingwood – A Slazenger player, Colly uses the i-blade to score some big runs just as he’s about to be dropped.
• Owais Shah – Scores a ton with his Kookaburra Blade in a warm up game, but will probably get overlooked incorrectly for one of the Slazenger boys.
• Freddie Flintoff – With the original Woodworm company not making it out of 2008, Freddie moved to Puma where he uses the pink Puma Evolution. Not the best colour for a bat, but I’m not going to argue with him!
• Matt Prior – Another Slazenger player, he uses the Air Blade like Bell did until this month, but generally with greater success.
• Tim Ambrose – Didn’t have a great time with his Kookaburra Ice last summer and will be lucky to get a chance to use it on this tour.
• Stuart Broad – A man after my own heart using a Gunn & Moore, he tries to be the (GM) Hero.
• Adil Rashid – A new entry into the squad, and another Slazenger user he’ll be hoping to get a chance with his Hyper Blade.
• Graham Swann – Back to the Gray Nicolls users, Swanny likes to biff the ball around with the GN Powerbow.
• James Anderson – Ever since he moved from Woodworm to Gray Nicolls and use the GN Nitro he turned into a decent lower order player – coincidence?!
• Ryan Sidebottom – Uses the re-introduced for the ‘08 season Gunn and Moore Cannon, when he’s playing and not injured.
• Steve Harmison – Has used Gunn and Moore’s of various models for a while now – he used to use the hero but now tries his slog sweeps with the GM Cannon.
• Monty Panesar – A bit of a loner with his choice of bat, Monty follows Ashley Giles’ path and uses a Hunts County Glory.

What can we tell from the above… well not a lot really since what they “use” is determined by their sponsorship package – so unsurprisingly most of the big names are represented. Looking for a bat for yourself – then you’ll probably start at one of these big companies, but don’t think that these are the only ones out there as there are plenty of smaller companies that can offer a more bespoke experience and you’ll come out with a great bat at the end of it. However, if you want to emulate your favourite England player you now know which bat you need to get!

I’m sorry, it’s not normal for me to get excited about the demise of a team, but seeing Australia battered by South Africa on Australia Day is just a little bit sweet for a pom such as myself. Just two short years ago we were on the receiving end of an Australia Day hammering, but the two years since havn’t been kind to the Aussies, and their team as I’ve mentioned already this month is a pale shadow of that one.

South Africa have been playing some good cricket of that there is no doubt (and you have to, winning both a test and one day series in Aus), but we beat the Saffers in the ODI’s 4-0 so they can’t be that good!

I’m looking forward to the Ashes even more (162 days and counting)!

England players and those following them out to the Caribbean have the right idea by getting out of this cold country over the next couple of days. How I’d love to be joining them and staying out there until they depart back for England on the 4th April, but following England isn’t a cheap hobby! Things have quietened down after all the fuss that was created when KP and Moores left their respective positions – and with Andy Flower as an interim appointment lets hope that the senior players get behind the new captain and perform well whilst out there. No doubt the tv and press will bring up the shortcomings of the ECB over the “row” surrounding KP, but it shouldn’t distract the players from doing the business.

Losing your coach isn’t ideal before a series but in all reality it shouldn’t be that difficult for them to adapt to the situation in the West Indies. The squad is generally the same, the back room staff are generally the same, and they are playing a side that is beatable when we play well. So there should be a postive vibe, especially as this series could set the tone for the year – a year we know is vitally important if you are an England cricket fan or player.

I’m hoping for a test series win, a win in the twenty20 game (to banish the horrible memories of the Stanford Twenty20 final), and of the ODI’s – who cares as long as we see some entertaining cricket!

Following Matty Hayden’s retirement from the International Scene, the Australian team which makes its way to these shores will be rather different from that which beat us in the first test match of the 06/07 Ashes series. Hayden is the 6th player from that team to retire after yesterday’s announcement, and with Lee and Stuart Clark currently out injured (and possibly for some time), that will leave just three players in Ponting, Hussey and Michael Clarke who set the Aussies on the road to a series whitewash still left standing.

So what does that mean for us and them though in the build up to the Ashes? There is no doubt that losing all that experience and quality makes it difficult for a team to keep up to the high standards they are used to, which was shown in their recent struggles against SA. Maybe the players in the 06/07 Ashes series were hurting after being beaten by us in ‘05 and wanted revenge, the squad of players which arrive on our shores this summer will be raw and not have experienced either the winning or losing of an Ashes series. They’ll still want to win of course, but will they have the desire to push that bit harder like they did to regain the Ashes?

England still have 8 players in and around the squad from that same game game in November ‘06, players that should have been embarrassed by what happened and will be wanting to claim back that little urn. That, topped with a dose of home advantage and a crowd right behind them will hopefully push the advantage our way – lets hope so!

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again in the future, but following England is never dull!

At first when the news came out of the camp about KP and Moores not quite seeing eye to eye, most of the talk was backing up KP, saying that Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood also didn’t have the best of relationships with Moores and that he wasn’t respected by the players enough. Then the commentary shifted after news that the ECB were hardening their stance towards KP as well, and that they weren’t going to cave in to all of his demands, whatever they may be.

After that we then have the shenanigans of Wednesday, with the “did he quit the captaincy in the morning or not”, and the announcement at the end of the day that Moores had been sacked and KP resigned as captain, but only in the afternoon. It all seems a bit farcical, and the Aussies are having a field day with it all (much better to talk about us than their pathetic team obviously!) – but today the papers, websites etc have gone full circle and are now making KP enemy number 1, and for what reason I’m not sure. Yes, it seems he pushed too hard and asked too much of the ECB, but he must have seen the chance to make a real difference as captain, and who’s to blame him for that? Sounds more like he needed someone he respected to quietly take him to one side and bring him back down to earth but keep him on board, not a basically forced resignation.

When KP was made captain he was almost the default choice, the only one secure of his place in all the sides (aside from maybe Freddie, whose fitness was still, and probably will always remain a small doubt), and by making Strauss captain for the WIndies tour they’ve chosen someone not even in the ODI squad! I’m not against Strauss as a captain at all – I think he is a damn fine one – but it was less than a year ago he had only just got back in the team due to poor form, and as I’ve just said, he isn’t currently in the ODI side (although he could do just as good a job as Ian Bell has at the top of the order in that form of the game).

Coach wise, the ECB now have a new hunt on their hands – I don’t know if Andy Flower can step up to the plate from being batting coach but I’d be happy if he did, and by probably taking on the job for the WIndies tour will be a good interview for getting the job full time. Otherwise, the first chance a new coach will have to get used to the team and implement some new practices is a short home series against the WIndies before the Ashes series! Not a perfect solution by any means.

But what of KP though – how does he handle such a high profile loss of the captaincy after only a few months? As often with KP, no-one will know the answer to that than himself. He is professional enough to go out there and do the job, but you’ll always have a nagging doubt under the surface that it wouldn’t take much for him to say “sod it” and run off and chase the Indian Twenty20 money.

All we can hope is that it doesn’t disrupt our performances from here on – we need a good series home and away against the West Indies so we go into the Ashes in good form and with players settled and knowing what is expected of them!

Quite a lot has happened in the world of cricket since I last posted here – had a bit of time off the computer over Christmas, as I needed to recharge my writing batteries for all that 2009 brings!

I’m not going to go into too much depth right now since the test series against India is done and dusted, suffice to say there were signs that we were doing ok, without having the talent/belief to close a result out. Since then we’ve heard that captain KP and coach Moores aren’t getting along too well which doesn’t really bode well. It’s unclear how this will be resolved right now, but the ECB aren’t going to want to upset their captain and best batsman before the vital summer we face, and the Ashes series along with the Twenty20 world cup in this country.

Speaking of the Ashes, I’ve been delighted to see Australia beaten in their own back yard by South Africa! It looks like they might claw back the 3rd test, but with SA already 2 up they will win the series – the first touring side to do so in Australia for a long time. Australia really don’t look the same side they did when they beat us 5-0 in 06/07, so we could be in for a treat of an Ashes battle this summer.

Anyway, lots more to come on this blog over the next year, so keep coming back and let me know if you want to voice your opinion about any of it and I’ll be more than happy to post it here!