Busy Week Ahead
I’ve a feeling this might be quite a busy week, what with England doing quite well, the Twenty20 starting and all this talk of a cricket “Champions League”. Where to start?!
A quick review of the test is probably a good starting point, which we won convincingly thanks to a number of good performances from the team. When “good” Jimmy A turns up I think we can see what he can do, and for that reason he can be a match winner against the South Africans later this summer. But is he a luxury in a four man seam attack? Something from the Kiwi’s stirred up Sideshow Ryan in the second innings which made his follow throughs and signs to the batsmen he got out quite aggressive which was fun to see, we’ll see plenty of that from Andre Nel and co later in the summer so hopefully he’ll keep it up! Broad showed his talent and potential on a number of occasions and he could turn into a properly good number 8 in the future.
Strauss was named man of the series which is a stunning comeback having been dropped last winter. My hope is that this is a start of a fantastic run of form which will continue through to next summer’s Ashes series, and him and Cook seems a decent opening partnership. Bell and Colly have been a concern, Bell less so in my eyes, but the signs are they are going to be given the time to get it right. I think the one day games have come at the right time for them, more chance to get out there and hit themselves into form hopefully! And Ambrose seems to have done a decent job behind the stumps and has had some good performances with the bat as well, here’s hoping we’ve got a settled player here for a while!
Onto the “Champions League” idea.. I won’t repeat what has been said about the idea, you can read it better on the BBC Sport site. It sounds like a decent idea in principle, and it adds a lot of extra spice to the domestic Twenty20 competition starting this Wednesday, but I’m just worried that it seems to have come in a bit quickly and I’m worried the idea has been a bit rushed. If we had a year to think about it, questions such as who will play in the teams, who should get the money and how the prize money is distributed could be thought about properly rather than what will probably be a rushed decision that no doubt some won’t be happy with. However, it is a good idea and will create International interest, so lets give it a chance and refine it over the next few years.
Twenty20 can wait until another day, it starts on Wednesday - and with good weather expected this week it should be better than last year’s washout! And come Friday we have England and the Kiwi’s battling in Twenty20 of their own, which should be good viewing with a couple of beers and a pizza!
