I spent an hour or so yesterday looking at the player lists for Telegraph Fantasy Cricket 2008, so it seems only fair to let you know some of the players I was picking out. Bearing in mind, I still havn’t chosen my final XI, so these won’t necessarily make it into my team. My general strategy though I’ve decided is to go for an all round team, with few high rated players. I’m going to pack the 5 and 6 point players into my team I think, with county proven players who are going to win the LiveCricketUpdates.com mini league for me!

Batsman

After the first week of county games and LV cup games, Ravi Bopara has had a storming time of it. He also bowls, so there could be vital extra points there to be had. Although, being 7 points he isn’t cheap and he could be a risk – if he keeps his form up England will call him up and if he doesn’t, there is little point in having him!

Francois Du Plessis via South Africa to Lancashire is only a 3 point player, but he has a big reputation as a player for the future so things will be expected of him. Hasn’t really had a chance yet to show what he can do, but if you like a risk and need a 3 pointer he could be it.

Another 3 point batsman who has started really well is Usman Afzaal at Surrey. A ton in the county champ game and his experience of the county game make a mockery of his rating, with the only doubt being whether he’ll play every game given the strength of the brown caps batting lineup. Plus, will everyone have him in their team given he is a name people have “heard of” and see his cheap rating?

Mark Pettini has also had a good start to the season, and is only a 4 pointer. I think he plays in all forms of the game so could be someone to put in and forget about for the season! You have to be very careful not just to pick the players scoring tons at this stage of the season though, its tempting but you need to see the bigger picture!

Batsman such as Langer, Tresco, Key, Ramps, Rudoplh are all very much a given in this game. They’ll all score good runs, but you’ll pay in starting rating, and by having to make sacrifices in other areas of the team. Not to mention how similar your starting XI’s wil be!

Wicket Keepers

I tend not to spend too much on a wicket keeper in this form of the game – it seems that as long as you choose a guy who plays regularly and has some decent form with the bat that’s enough for me and I’ll save the points for other parts of the team. With that in mind, Nixon, Batty, Mustard, Foster etc are all out and I’m looking at one of three 5 point keepers; Jones, Sutton or Kieswetter. Jones is the obvious choice again as people have heard of him, but I like my team to be different so I’m looking at one of the other two probably. Kieswetter opened for Somerset yesterday and can hold a bat, whilst I might wait for Lancashire to play a couple of games before I decide on Luke Sutton or not.

All Rounders

Ryan McLaren from Kent could be in with a chance of getting into my team rated at 5 – I saw him bowl pretty sharpish last year, but I can’t remember how good he was with the bat, so I might have to check that out first.

Sean Ervine is only rated as a 5 as well, but I’ve picked him before and he’s infuriated me with his lack of getting involved with a game. He might have to bowl more with Hampshire’s winter troubles with bowlers, so he could be a decent pick for someone though.

The Dutchman Ryan ten Doeschate of Essex came close to being in my team – he scored a ton in the opening County champ game and is another one rated at 5, but I don’t know quite enough about him to happily put him in at the moment. Another one worth a look though.

Adil Rashid is a popular choice as well, but I think 6 points is too overrated for him this year. He needs more time in county cricket to deserve those kinds of ratings in my eyes.

Grahame Swann seemed to score a shed load of points last year, and as long as you watch when he gets picked for England in the ODI side he might be worth the 7 points he costs. One you will have to watch as the season goes on though, which isn’t really my style!

Bowlers

I’ve not had much chance to look at the bowlers list and decide where the worthwhile players are – but on early season wickets the seam bowlers are always the ones worth going for. Shreck and Onions are two popular choices, both with a very outside chance of making it into an England squad.

Onions had a poor year by his standards in ‘07 after a brilliant year the year before, and he could do it again. Plunkett is another bowler from Durham who is currently out of favour with the England selectors, but he should get points galore (but he is rated 7). Finally from the North East we have our friend Harmison. If he bowls well he’ll probably be called back into the England team, if he doesn’t then he won’t. Either way, you probably don’t want to pick him despite his decent enough showing in the LV cup yesterday.

Another player who impressed with both bat and ball yesterday was Tim Bresnan from Yorkshire – he is only a 5 pointer and as long as he gets a game every time he will be a popular pick. His bowler partner in crime at the end of the Yorkshire batting innings also showed himself in a good light – Ajmal Shazad. Rated only 3, he had something about him and if he plays regularly he’s a decent shout.

From Somerset Charl Willoughby has caught my eye – with the lack of anything else really standing out from Taunton someone is going to have to take the wickets, and at 6 points I think he could be a decent shout.

Apart from those mentioned i’m struggling to really find the quality in the bowling list – we have other England players in years past in Jones or Mahmood, Hoggard – but my knowledge of the county bowlers is much less than I thought!

With the counties starting pre-season games this week (it seems far, far too early though!), thoughts start to look towards the county season and The Telegraph’s popular fantasy league cricket game. There isn’t much to report at the moment, it looks like they’re waiting for the last few decisions on who is actually going to turn up and not play in India, but you can “pre-register” for the game here, and start signing up from the 7th April.

I’m undecided if at the moment if I’ll sign up – a couple of years ago I enjoyed it but there is so much cricket to try and keep an eye on and not enough time nowadays and last year my team was just ignored once I’d set it up! Anyone else thinking of playing?

Quite a bold move, but if I’m honest it doesn’t surprise me in the least. Ever since he came over to play for Hants he’s taken them for a bit of a ride, saying he’ll only be over during particular dates, not playing in certain tournaments etc. Rod Bransgrove (Hants chairman) took it all though as Warne was a great marketing tool for him and the Rose Bowl outfit. And I’ll be honest, it worked to get me there a couple of times as watching the guy play did make you feel like you were watching a world class player.

However, ever since it was announced that he would miss the start of the ‘08 season to play poker (yes really), he went down in my estimation. Either you are a cricketer or a pro poker player, make up your mind and don’t play us all for fools, and sure as hell not this close to the start of the league season. Why has he taken until this point to say he’ll not play for Hants again? He was supposed to be happy where he was living and playing cricket, so something has come up, and its probably money..

Re-reading what I’ve written it seems a bit harsh on Warne as I understand that the Indian leagues and other stuff outside of cricket bring these guys a good retirement fund, but something about this announcement just seemed so inevitable I think I would have preferred to hear it early on, with all the cards on the table (no pun intended!)

The UK county cricket season finished last weekend, although with the riveting World Twenty20 on, it got a bit left behind in the media, and on this blog as well. And with England starting their winter of cricket with the first one dayer against Sri Lanka on Monday there is no room to rest at the moment in cricket news terms!

In the county championship division 1, Sussex were the first side for a while to win back to back titles. Spearheaded, again, by Mustaq Ahmed, Chris Adams’ team did enough to hold off Lancs and Durham, who finished second and third.

In the second division, Somerset didn’t surprise many people by winning promotion back to the top division. With players such as Tresco, Langer, Cameron White playing, and Caddick having had his best season for a while they won at a canter. With the restrictions not allowing as many overseas players next year we have seen the last of White there for a bit, but Langer remains as captain and will be hoping to finish near the top of the top division next season.

Otis Gibson was one of the stars of the county season, taking 80 wickets, and at the ripe old age of 38. With Alan Donald busy elsewhere for England’s tour of Sri Lanka, Gibson will be the bowling coach for them, a role he has done for Peter Moores at the academy recently.

Mark Ramprakash had another barn-storming season with the bat, and finished the season with a batting average of over 100! Two magnificent years in a row for the guy – now if only he’d had this sort of form when he played for England…

For a more in depth view of which were the players of the season, take a look at the cricket blog over at the googly – they see more county cricket than I do and do a much better job bringing it all together!

Over two days in a rather dismal London, Shane the German and his bunch of merry men were outplayed by a bunch of northerners travelling south for their first final as a county.

Apologies for the lack of preview and my thoughts on who would win, but I wasn’t actually sure which way I was going to go. I did say to a mate before the game started though that I fancied Durham as underdogs to spring a surprise, but I didn’t believe it enough to put any money on it though! I think the word I’m looking for here is “DOH”!

Herr Shane decided (I’m not quite sure why) to put Durham in to bat, and Mustard soon set about showing Hampshire the way to play positive cricket. And at the other end of the innings, Gibson managed to twat Tremlett into the stands a couple of times which was good to watch, unlike the horrific beamer the England “star” followed up with. Setting over 300 to win was a cracking performance from the Durham boys, and it was always going to be an uphill struggle for Hants to win.

The hill became as steep as Everest after the first over though, with Gibson taking two wickets and leaving Hants reeling on 3-2. KP was a bit of a disappointment, but it wasn’t the sort of situation he likes coming in on, despite the amount of practice England give him in one-dayers! At 158-5 when play was stopped it was a matter of waiting overnight for Durham to finish the job off. I’m not quite sure why they couldn’t just use the Duckworth/Lewis method to delay the inevitable, as when they eventually won it on Sunday it was in an almost empty Lords stadium. Not great for the TV, fans, players or anyone really.

Durham fully deserved the win, scoring over 300 after being put it to bat – and Hampshire will wonder how it got away from them quite so much. Maybe it was Warney’s pre match night routine of “pizza and a couple of beers”!

Whilst sat at a the county ground in Taunton last weekend basking in the un-summer-like sun, I heard something from a kid in front of me that got me thinking. The boy was probably around 10, and was at a Pro 40 game with his dad. About an hour in, he said “I’m bored, I prefer twenty20″. He moaned that they had only bowled 13 overs in an hour (slow admittedly, but it was very hot), and that it wasn’t exciting enough. Bearing in mind that Trescothick and Langer were at the crease on a small Taunton ground and it seemed like the boy’s problem was rather in his head than what he was actually seeing. He liked twenty20, therefore anything longer than that must be boring. And lets face it, there is a bit of that kid in all of us.Twenty20 has been so hyped up by the marketing bods at the counties, on TV and in the magazines and newspapers that almost everything else is a let down in comparison. We think we want to see boundaries every over, balls hit out the ground and some blistering run rates. However, twenty20 is only one part of cricket and however successful it has been, I’m starting to think its almost getting too successful and is close to harming the traditional forms of the game.

Come a Saturday afternoon, those that want to play a game of club cricket generally want it to be a 45-50 over affair. There are longer forms of the game going higher up the ECB pyramid also, and these games are supposed to get people ready for county cricket and maybe beyond. If the counties were to start playing more twenty20 cricket though, the skills required to be successful as a county player will change, and from there upwards our test players would change in skills also. Test cricket is still the pinnacle and gets great attention in the media and crowds, and we need players who can play the longer form of the game (something our current batsmen are making look hard!)

We need to do something to ensure that the cricketers coming through get experience of all types of cricket, and if the youngest generation only want to play the short version of the game that isn’t going to happen. Something needs to be done to generate interest in the Pro40, County Championship and Friends Provident trophies. Pro40 out of these doesn’t do too bad at some counties (if the weather is right), but there is still more that could be done. There are far too many kids at these games who aren’t even watching the cricket which surely isn’t right. Running around the ground, playing cricket with a tennis ball and not being able to see the pitch whilst Tresco, Langer and Blackwell are batting, surely Pro40 can’t be that bad?

One thing I know cricket misses out on is the pre-match news and views that other sports give. If we take football for an example, before any match we will have been on the club website, seen who might be playing, who is injured and a couple of interviews with managers and players. Sky Sports News is currently full of transfer rumours and injury news and the football season hasn’t even started yet! You try getting some information about the latest team news etc from a county club and it just won’t happen. If you offer this kind of service and news it may then get picked up by the TV and newswires which will immediately get you some possible additional coverage.

The ECB do offer some cricket clubs tickets for participating in schemes such as Focus Clubs, Cricket Force etc, but they are not greatly advertised and as such many people wouldn’t know how beneficial it is to participate. You cannot just give out some free tickets either though and expect everything to be all right. It needs a considered, long term plan to get people through the turnstiles at grounds around the country, something which I don’t see any evidence of currently.

It is an issue that needs to be addressed or forever you will get kids not going to any game that is “boring” or not Twenty20. What did his dad say to the boy mentioned in this post “Give it a chance”. I imagine he went home that night though and wondered whether it was worth returning until an “interesting” Twenty20 game comes around again. Clubs cannot build a season around getting crowds in for two weeks of the season, and something will have to be done to ensure all forms of cricket are marketed well throughout the country.