It’s nearly that time of year again – with the county season starting this week I visited the telegraph fantasy cricket website to see if they were running a fantasy cricket season again. I wasn’t greeted by much other than an image which gave a bit of info on the game, prizes and said to come back this Saturday, 18th April.

Despite losing interest throughout the season, its always fun at the start to pick a side but I’ll have to weigh up whether it’s worth the six quid entry it normally costs! There is a cricinfo fantasy game which I think is free so maybe I’ll give that one a go instead if it looks decent and I can get a few mates into a mini league.

Also, if you are looking for a small county cricket preview I found the opinions on the sky sports website quite interesting to read – head over there to see what Bumble, Athers et all think about the upcoming season here.

Kent batted rubbish – Rob Key admitted it and he’s absolutely right. They even lost me a fiver. Oh well, I won it back and more on the start of the Premier League so happy days!

Speaking of the Premier League (the football kind not the cricket kind), now that it has started cricket will start to find press and tv coverage harder to come by. Unless anything really outstanding happens in the upcoming ODI series against SA, cricket will be nothing but the odd mention a few pages in, which is par for the course and accepted pretty much by now. Clubs around the country have only a couple of league games left in the season and thoughts turn to depressing things like winter. Who’s joining me on a flight to Australia?!

I don’t have high hopes for the series, I’m not that bothered if we win either to be honest, I just want to see some entertaining cricket! We tried to play Scotland today in a warm up to the series, but being August it rained a lot – I don’t know the forecast for the first Twenty20 game, but given this current weather we may not have that much hope of getting a full decent game in. We can hope though!

This Saturday sees the final of the Friends Provident Trophy, between two sides we’re pretty much sick of seeing on TV i reckon, Essex and Kent. Due to their success in the various formats of the game, everyone is pretty well used to the two teams that will be lining up at Lords, and these two also met on Twenty20 finals day when Kent came out winners – and I can’t see any reason why this Final will be any different. Kent’s powerful team will be too much for the teamwork but not big names of Essex, if they survive the rain that is expected to come in (who’d expect any different in the middle of August?!)

So if I’m not going to waste any time talking about the winner (it will be Kent), lets start to make things interesting and start looking for the top batsman, and help someone out there win some money on my tips! In the Kent side, Joe Denly hasn’t looked in fantastic nick in the past couple of weeks, and although he’ll undoubtedly put some runs on the board early, I don’t think he is in the running. Jones, Mahmood, Kemp et all all have the potential to score some big runs, but it is more likely to be a cameo at the end of an innings rather than the match winning score. On the Essex balcony, Napier has been a revelation this season, but on a middle strip at Lords he’ll find those sixes rather harder to hit than at Chelmsford. Skipper Pettini will be under pressure to get his side off to a good start at the top of the order, but beneath that I don’t see them scoring the must have big runs despite Cook and Ravi Bop being available.

So there are two players I havn’t mentioned yet and that is because I think it will be between them, and my money will go where the best value odds are – and that is Key and Van Jaarsveld. Yes, Key may be the obvious option, but he’s playing fantastic cricket at the moment, and earlier this week he played a really smart innings against Leicestershire when he had to battle a bit which shows he can read the situation well. If his odds are too low, then I’ll be looking for Van Jaarsveld to come in at number three and be top scorer – this guy is a class bat and is fully capable of doing that.

So a Kent win and Rob Key top scorer bets, I’ve placed my bets at the bookies! If you’re having a bet let me know what you’re backing as I’d love to know!

Severe lack of posting this week – busy-ness finishing off an online cricket shop for a friend and the lack of cricket on tv to get me excited meant not much action here, but seeing as twenty20 time is around the corner expect more to happen now!

Despite my recommendations in my last post about making some changes to my Telegraph Fantasy Cricket Team, I never got round to it and my position is being affected badly because of it. I thought in the end I might as well hold off and make the changes next week once all the twenty20 players have turned up and I can get some specialists into the side!

Speaking of Twenty20, it starts on the 11th June (next weds), and I’m looking forward to seeing some hopefully dry weather and good cricket. Last year’s tournament was decimated by the rain, and the way things have been recently I think we’re going to have to cross our fingers for some good weather. I havn’t had a chance to find a decent preview of the competition yet, no doubt they’ll appear in the weekend papers and I’ll link to one when I find it.

One player who might take Twenty20 by storm this year is Ravi Bopara. He’s in England’s one day squad so he might not play that much for Essex in the competition, but Ravi Bop scored an incredible 201* in the Friends Provident Trophy yesterday in 150 something balls I think it was. Well played Ravi, but you better watch out as that type of form might get you picked for England!

Over the the WIndies, Australia are continuing their good run of Test victories, but not quite as convincingly on the pitch as they used to. Things that have happened over there – ‘Punter’ Ponting recently passed 10,00 runs which is a hell of an achievement, and Stuart MacGill announced his retirement after taking a bit of stick from the WIndies batsmen and realising that he couldn’t continue. He was unlucky in the sense he was born in the Shane Warne era and never had the chance to properly stake his claim, but he was always prone to bowling a long hop an over, but boy he could turn the ball a bloody mile! It’ll be interesting to see the replacement for MacGill, as with the Ashes starting next summer the spinner won’t have that much time to get used to the international scene before taking us on. He’ll be rubbish of course and we’ll claim back the Ashes! Hmm…

Right, I’m off to watch the highlights of us attempt to screw up the first day of the Test Match against NZ. Until next time..

I wanted to talk about this when the news broke – I wasn’t able to, but better late than never! If you don’t know about the what where and when, go read the bbc report, then come back here for my view.

Allan Stanford, the American Billionaire looks keen to invest in a tournament that would give England a good IPL rival twenty20 competition. It looks like this is a great idea for a number of reasons, and I think that Stanford has given all the right noises that he seems like the right kind of guy to be a driving force in its conception.

Stanford has had a lot to do with Twenty20 in the West Indies, building his own ground for the competition over there, and bringing a sense of excitement and even innovation in the fact that they use cricket bats painted black in the competition. It is said that he has absolutely no interest in the longer forms of the game, especially Test Cricket, but with the sums of money he can bring in that is not that much of a problem – it will all be money for the game and raise the profile of cricket as an entertaining sport.

I also like the fact that we don’t seem to be rushing too much into this, looking at doing it in 2 years time. This should hopefully mean that when it comes about it isn’t as a knee jerk reaction and is planned out properly with all the relevant interested parties consulted and listened to. Twenty20 in this country currently has a spot in the middle of the summer to itself, so it shouldn’t be that difficult to schedule something in – the only difference really is the marketing and and the rules in terms of players etc. Will it still be counties and will they bring in players even more specifically for the tournament – and will you be allowed more overseas players than currently? Lots of questions, but there is a decent length of time to come up with the answers and as long as the right people are making the decisions I feel positive.

Another good reason for having our own competition like this is to help keep a bit of power in international cricket over here. There is no doubt that India are a very powerful country when it comes to cricket politics, and with the IPL/ICL we have started to see the repercussions of that power – Test Cricket has already lost some of its stars and county cricket is also feeling the pain. Maybe this is a bit selfish, but I don’t think one superpower is healthy as they end up dictating to the rest of the world who can play where and when. Spread the money that players can earn and hopefully it will all be a bit more balanced.

It might be that we end up with too many players that start to try and specialise in the shorter form of the game, and these players might not make the transition to the four and five day games, but that kind of happens now anyway so in my mind this isn’t an issue… yet.

So it all seems positive, and I’m struggling to see a negative side at the moment – anyone out there know anything wrong with this proposal?

I havn’t talked much about the actual game of cricket over the past couple of weeks – too much new England shirts and Telegraph fantasy cricket to worry about!

However, the county season has begun under grey skies and on damp pitches (this April is rubbish compared to last year), with the County Championship and Liverpool Victoria cups. I tend not to cover county cricket in too much detail here, there is far too much going on and not enough time to keep on top of it all, but I also find some interest at the start of a season, and below I mention how the start of the season will affect some of the England hopefuls.

Sky Sports showed their first game of the season on Sunday between Durham and Yorkshire in the LV Cup, and they managed to pick a decent game with a surprisingly tight finish. Yorkshire managed to nearly win the game thanks to Bresnan and Shazad, after looking right out of it, and it was a really good game to see the end of. Hopefully we’ll have more decent county cricket, but in the sunshine! Twenty20 managed to hit the worst part of the summer last year but that is always good fun, although now it will forever be compared to the IPL/ICL – the first of which started last Friday.

There are a few test match places up for grabs, so the start of the season is an important one for some England hopefuls and those who need to cement their place in the team. Shah will probably miss out but needs to score some runs to put pressure on Strauss who himself needs to score (for the same county – no run outs there please!). If Ravi Bop can continue his storming start to the season his hat will be in the ring as well.

Flintoff needs lots of hours batting and bowling, the second part of which Harmison, Hoggard and Anderson also need. Mustard and Ambrose both showed promise over the winter tours, but one of them needs to step up to the plate, and a decent start to the county season might just help them do that. Add in players such as Plunkett and Mahmood who will harbour thoughts of getting back into the frame and it could be a fighting first month in the bowling department!

Also, my own games of cricket start in a couple of weeks time – I should probably have played a friendly or two, so I’ll go into the first league game a bit cold but hey, its too cold to play cricket at the moment!