The amount of crap journalism coming out of the British Press right now is quite astounding. It must be a slow news week for them to spend all week talking about small incidental things happening at the Stanford cricket ground like the organiser having a bit of a laugh (shock horror, someone having fun in the Caribbean), and all of a sudden they are all coming out one after another like little sheep saying “this was bound to happen”, and my favourite over reaction calling it a “tacky circus of an egotistical American”. Get over yourselves, and stop thinking cricket is still in the early 1900’s.

When England were first invited to take part in the competition the press were falling over themselves to get a piece of Alan Stanford and saying how good it was this type of money was coming into the game of cricket in this country. Then, as soon as the “action” starts they start moaning that its all about the money, or Stanford himself. Which way do you want it?!

The facilities at the ground are said to be first class (or better than if you look at some county grounds in this country) – yes there have been some issues with the lights but they have said they will rectify that before the big game on Saturday. The pitch has been a bit slow and low but guess what, they had a hurricane about 10 days before the games started so to even get it on is an achievement (ask Worcestershire how long it takes them to recover after a light sprinkling of rain in comparison).

“Its all about Alan Stanford” – is one thing they are saying and here’s some news for you – no it isn’t! I’ve watched the games and guess what, I’ve seen more cricket than I have one American billionaire (who lets not forget is putting a load of money into our game as a consequence). And seeing as he is bankrolling it who’s to care if he has a camera on him every now and then? It doesn’t detract from the game going on.

I just don’t get what the media are trying to gain by all this – they are just following one another seeing as being down on the competition seems to be the “done” thing at the moment (and not just cricket – ask the people at Radio 2). Maybe instead you would prefer to be sitting in an office in London twiddling your thumbs rather than on a beach in Antigua reporting on a ground breaking game of cricket. If I was Stanford I wouldn’t invite the ECB back again anyway seeing how ungrateful they are appearing to be – get a team over that will embrace the competition and the atmosphere rather than one moaning about how they’d rather be at home.

Well England have played their last game of the summer (well it was supposed to be summer), so we might as well have a quick look back on some of the things which happened – ones that I can remember anyway!

The Good 

• KP’s performance as the new England captain – came in with no captaincy experience and managed to get players performing and you can’t ask for more. A little bit worried he might just pick his mates even when times are tough, but I could be proved wrong.
• The return of Freddie – Rejoice! Flintoff back into the side is a HUGE boost, he adds something with bat, ball and character and we’ve missed him big style. Fingers crossed for no more injuries.
• England’s ODI performance against SA – 4-0 is a fantastic result for us, as things clicked in most areas for a change. We’ll not get too over the top but it was a pleasing sight after recent efforts on the ODI front. Maybe good things will happen at the Stanford Twenty20 competition!
• Stuart Broad – Not an outstanding test series summer, but he did very well in the ODI’s, and proved enough about him to see that is a real one to look forward to watching in the years to come.
• Getting Harmy back in the side – We all want Harmison in the side if his head is in the right place and he is bowling well. He was doing just that for Durham so he was brought back in and didn’t let us down. Please let it continue!
• KP’s Switch Hit – Brilliant, genius shot!

The Bad

• Not performing well against SA in the test series – we may have scored over 600 at Lords, and won the final test, but the fact of the matter is we lost the series and didn’t play consistently good cricket – we failed to even compete in stages.
• The Furore at the Oval ODI against NZ – with Grant Elliot being run out whilst lying on the floor this wasn’t a pretty occasion (despite my feelings that not that much was wrong with it). It died down pretty quickly, but for a while there cricket didn’t have a great ‘rep’.
• Tim Ambrose – Sorry Tim, but shut the door on your way out. No runs with the bat, dropped catches and not enough about you as a keeper, your time is up my friend.
• Playing NZ away, then home – It bored the crap out of me seeing the same opposition for what seemed likes months on end – shocking planning.
• The ODI against NZ at Edgbaston – I was there and I loved the day (and the nights before and afterwards..), but it was crap weather, I was in shorts and t-shirt fancy dress and the match was abandoned a few balls short of being an official match – what a waste of everyone’s time!

The Mediocre

• Strauss, Bell, Collingwood with the bat – individually at small stages they did well (Bell’s 199 in particular), but looking at the whole series they did it when they looked about to be for the chop which is really depressing. We know they can do it, so its frustrating when they wait for last chance salon to perform.
• Sideshow Ryan – After being the best and most consistent England bowler for a year, this summer wasn’t a great one for Ryan. Whether it was caused by injuries or not, he didn’t look threatening or worthy of a spot in the team towards the end of the year. A real shame after a great year previous but there are others pushing for this spot and he’ll have to put in some work.
• The Summer – Just generally, if you had to put a tag on the summer of cricket ‘mediocre’ would be it. We beat NZ like you would expect, but not in a convincing fashion, and then lost to SA before winning the ODI series. Up and down like normal for England then!

I’ve probably missed some bits out – so let me know what you thought of the summer in the comments!

There’s something about bowling the Saffers out of the water that gets my writing juices going! Kallis gave us a great quote in the build up to the 2nd ODI, saying two things of particular note:

“From a team point of view it was the worst display we have had for probably two years”
“The guys will come out and you will see a different side.”

Well then, what happened today Jacques?! The game was more or less over by the time I’d made it home, when I was looking forward to a nice evening watching cricket after the decent first ODI. I’ll have to settle for watching the highlights, and it’ll be interesting to see how, or why they were bowled out for so little and how we set about the target with ease. It isn’t what you’d expect from either team (or more to the point, you’d not be that surprised if it was England who capitulated!), so seeing the reaction from the SA camp will be good.

I’m not going to get too excited though, I’ve seen too many false dawns recently as an England fan to think we’ve suddenly become world beaters!

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!

We’re lucky in the cricket world that it is still a gentleman’s game. And that was kind of shown yesterday when I personally don’t think that much wrong at all was done in a competitive game of cricket, yet Collingwood has said that he maybe did the wrong thing. If you don’t know what I’m on about, go and read the report quickly at the BBC website.

As I was watching it on Sky and the Kiwi commentator was going completely over the top about the incident, Nasser Hussain’s comments that “something didn’t feel right” were my feelings also, but it was the sort of feeling that you couldn’t pin down.

Looking at the replays it is obvious that Sidebottom is going for the ball, Mills is running like a madman when there wasn’t really a run there and Elliot choose the wrong side of the wicket to run. Collision occurs, two players are down but Elliot gets up and continues running without hobbling or holding his leg. It is only after he is run out that he starts hobbling and suggesting he is injured – but seriously, look at the incident again and he gets straight up at the time of collision.

They were attempting a run, a collision occured but it is part of the game and there are situations it has happened before (KP being run out in SA a few years ago for one) – it wasn’t willful obstruction and I don’t see why Collingwood should have called him back. The fact he apologised for maybe being wrong in upholding the appeal does put quite a quick end to any ill feeling but I don’t feel he should have to.

Maybe I’m not being a “gentleman” about it all, but the situation does make us feel lucky being cricket fans when you compare it to a football game where any advantage people can get they will take. Maybe cricket is headed that way, with the money involved currently a big talking point and we could see more contentious situations in the future, but at least it makes life interesting!

Well I did see some cricket at Edgbaston in the end after endless rain delays, and as you will all probably know by now there wasn’t a result. If I’m honest I went out of the ground thinking there had been a New Zealand win, and that kind of just summed up the poor communication that was received throughout the day. We weren’t informed enough of inspections, match rules (overs per bowler etc), and then we had the delay between innings but we still had a laugh (even though we paid full price for a match which turned out to see less than half of the overs paid for).

But we were entertained by Luke Wright, Dimi and Colly with the bat and NZ came to the party both then and in the game at Bristol on Saturday which at least means we can’t rest on our laurels for the rest of the series. The series against SA doesn’t seem that far away now and we’ll have to up our game to win those series.

Otherwise there has been plenty of Twenty20 action on Sky Sports which has been good viewing, although right now i couldn’t pick a winner as many sides seem to be able to raise their game on the odd occasion, but who will be able to carry it forward to the semi’s and final? We’ve had more ludicrous cricket politics coming out of India saying who will and won’t be able to play in the ‘Champions League’ – saying players which have played in the rebel IPL won’t be able to take part. I don’t care for cricket politics right now – it bores me and I have no interest in talking about who can and cannot play – just show me some cricket.

I often hit a point in the season where I get bored of playing and talking about cricket and I think that has come about now, hence why I havn’t updated the site for a week – anyone want to lighten the mood and write about something fun and related to cricket please drop me a line and I’ll publish the best!