Three (or two, whichever way you look at it) matches into the test series and we must start having serious doubts as to our ability to get us out of this series deficit we find ourselves in. To win the series means having to win each of the final two tests, difficult enough with the England team alone, and unavailability is making the task even more difficult.

Despite the tense end to the last test, the test as a whole wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped, although I don’t sit in the Botham camp (ie. I know everything, I told you so type words) and blame Strauss for batting too long. Had Chanderpaul and Sarwan been batting towards a more achievable target, on the pitch they had I reckon we could have lost the game. Anyway, that is done and dusted, but what team can we pick for the next game?

Flintoff is out injured, Prior is in England with his wife and new baby, and Swann is a small doubt with an arm injury. Coupled with the fact that Harmison is still useless, there is the need for 2, 3 or 4 changes to the side. Ambrose will take the gloves (oh.. joy…), but I’d seriously put Broad ahead of him in the batting line up. Going in with five bowlers doesn’t really show you have faith in them, so assuming Swann is fit I’m going with him, Broad, Anderson and a n other. Amjad Khan took 5 wickets in the warm up game but bringing him in would be nearly as close to insanity as bringing in that Australian roofer Pattinson, after only one warm up game. In for Freddie will be Bell or Ravi Bop – I’d go with Ravi for the simple fact that he brings fresh enthusiasm into the team, and not the same old same old mentality.

However, I have little confidence in that team actually pulling a win out of the bag unfortunately, such is my pessimism with the England team at the moment. Just call me Bob Willis!!

Interesting news coming out of the USA and Antigua today about three of Sir Allen Stanford’s companies being effectively frozen temporarily whilst they are investigated for “fraud of a shocking magnitude”. Now, normally I wouldn’t talk about business on this little cricket blog, but given how the ECB have teamed up with Stanford it seems worth mentioning – although with it all happening today all the facts probably aren’t available yet.

I was a fan of the whole Stanford 2020 last year generally, although I know I’m probably in the minority with that view. It does seem inexcusable from the ECB though that they got into such a public relationship with an individual who has turned out to allegedely screw over a lot of his clients amongst other discrepancies- not good PR whichever way you look at it. It doesn’t matter that they had good intentions, as Mike Atherton put it “they need to to be made accountable for the consequences of their decision”.

Giles Clarke is doing a very good impression of someone trying to back away from it all right now, playing the “board” line, but he is the chair of that board and ultimately responsible. After the merry go round of captain and coach in January and now this in February, we are going to start to turn into the world’s laughing stock.

P.S – yes I know there is a test match on and I havn’t even mentioned the beach they tried to play on last week but hey, I’ll talk about all that soon!

What can I say about the horrific, dreadful, abject “performance” of the England team in the first test? Since it happened I’ve been trying not to think about it, taking the “if I don’t think about it, it didn’t happen!” route, but that isn’t really working!

The first innings from the England batsmen (and I use the term batsmen in its lightest meaning) was bad enough, but when Gayle and Sarwan came to the crease it was made to look all the more worse. We were lucky that we only came out of the first innings with a 70 run deficit the way they were batting. Broad was the only bowler to come out with any real credit, finally getting the wickets that have evaded him in test cricket until now.

Then comes the shocking second innings, for which I am at a complete loss to explain. Despite the protests of the management, the fallout of the KP and Moores falling out must have played its part. Even if it didn’t in an obvious way in their training and build up, the players can’t have mentally approached the game correctly, and known who expected what of them.

I’m still behind Strauss as skipper, its not his fault he’s picking up a pack of cards that has been thrown on the floor, and if he can get us out of this he’ll show true leadership qualities. KP was a bit of an idiot in the way he got out in the first innings but in the grand scheme of things his performance was still better than the rest of the team and there are other’s more deserving of our wrath right now.

Where do we go for the next test though? Flower has said there won’t be sweeping changes and there can’t really be given the size of a touring squad, but if Bell plays I will eat my hat. They won’t drop Monty despite how much they should do, and Anderson might expect to come in for Harmy or Sideshow. Whatever happens I hope its a better pitch than the one at Sabina Park which served up some dull cricket (although that might have been Englands fault!)

I’m always quite happy at the start of an English test series, when its in the warmth of the West Indies and the timings mean I can watch a fair bit of action I’m even happier! With the day’s play starting around 3pm it gives me plenty of time to watch live cricket rather than highlights so lets hope for some good action!

They say they won’t announce the side until closer to the start of the game, but if they go in with two specialist spinners I would be very surprised. KP can do more than enough as a second spinner and given the second warm up game showed us how batsman friendly the pitches can be, I think we need the extra seamer to spread the workload. Thankfully Freddie is fit to play, whether Bell and Collingwood survive will be a close call and Harmy will be hoping to play on the pitch which gave him his best figures of 7-12 a few years back. However, Sidebottom is fit again and in the reckoning and Anderson can be brilliant on his day so there are decisions to be made by the new skipper.

I don’t have any doubts on Strauss as a captain, he’s got a air of calmness and authority that works well and I’m looking forward to how he copes with the challenges of captaining the team. Roll on this afternoon!!

Today is a momentous day, for the 1st February ‘09 marks the second year anniversary of this website! I started it up in Feb ‘07 having just returned from a nice long holiday in Australia watching us get hammered in the Ashes, and deciding to see what this blogging lark is all about. I’ve gone through moments of getting bored of cricket and therefore not writing about it, but generally I’ve been here either talking about the current news or equipment, or just moaning about something which has annoyed me!

In two years I’ve made 205 posts – in the early days they included talking about pink cricket grips (a highly commented post) and talking about the World Cup, followed up by my incredulity at Sidebottom making it back into the England squad (I admit it, I was wrong!).

Over the past 11 months, I’ve had analytics on this site and by far and away the most popular posts have been those surrounding cricket equipment, with the peak being the unveiling of the Adidas Cricket Equipment last October. It was so popular that one of the uk cricket retailers even “stole” my image of KP by linking directly to it – I therefore changed it so it made no sense on their website!

Going forward I fully intend to keep going – hopefully this summer will give us plenty to talk about with the Twenty20 World Cup, and of course the Ashes! I’ll try and keep stuff interesting to ensure you keep coming back – as always please get in touch with any ideas, items etc which you think I should be talking about. You can sign up to my RSS feed to make sure you get the latest posts as soon as they are published.

Its been a fun two years (mostly), and what I’ve learnt from here has stood me in good stead on other sites I run, so thanks to all of you for visiting and making writing it worthwhile!