So, the squad for Bangladesh has been announced, and for a sweet while there isn’t the mechanisms of an additional T20 competition to be debated over and over again, I give thanks for small mercies.

First thought is that it’s a bit of a strange squad, even with the India tour in mind, a team of 17 for 2 Tests seems a bit OTT to me, but probably reflects England’s uncertainty in conditions that aren’t conducive to the game plan of playing 4 seamers and hoping they’ll gel enough to take enough wickets to disguise the lack of a middle order that we have.

First things first, I massively think Hameed is a big talent, but we might have a Sheep replica in the fact he scores at quite a low rate (from memory that was the same criticism aimed at Compton and also at times with Trott). We might be 24-0 off 12 overs but is that pushing the match forward with the flimsy middle order that we have, well I’ll leave that for you to decide. 65-4 off 25 overs isn’t a brilliant position. I personally think Hameed will end up taking Cook’s position in the future, but both opening the batting together, that I’m not so sure about..

As for the spin options, despite being a Middlesex fan, I’m not desperately disappointed about Batty being picked. Liam Dawson was always the vanilla ‘let’s cover all bases’ pick that England made when picking Samit Patel for the UAE tests. Not bad at things, but hardly a master at either. Jack Leach would’ve been a far more progressive pick but we do have James Whittaker as Chief Selector, so progressive is unlikely to ever take priority. Batty will do a decent job, and despite being a bit of a dick (sorry Middx bias again) he’ll do a decent job if called upon. I can’t see Duckett or Ansari playing in the Tests, which is a shame as both are very talented.

Oh and just a small note around how the gutter press, yes Paul Newman, John Etheridge and the rest of the idiots, have treated Eoin Morgan in the last week. It’s been nothing more than jingoism gone mad, I’m not a massive fan of Morgan, but to call him out for not singing the national anthem (slight clue is that he’s Irish and if Ireland had been given a fair go at international cricket, then I doubt we’d been in this situation) and because he prefers the IPL to the county game. This is nothing more than blame storming, no-one really knows the background to Morgan’s decision, but to see the bile from so-called experts is more than disappointing. I guess Brexit means Brexit in some people’s eyes…

Be interested to hear what everyone else thinks…

As a side note TLG is away in Indonesia and Dmitri has been snowed at work and is away from Sunday this week, so apologies if posts are slightly sporadic over the next week, and we’re not even going to touch the FTA debate judging from comments from the last post!

Have a good weekend all….