Given the upcoming World Cup, and the five ODIs scheduled between these sides as part of the warm up for it, this particular encounter seems rather pointless. Still, that doesn’t usually make any difference, and at least this format of the game will be played in England in future.
The downgrading of the domestic 50 over competition to a “development” one from next year is one of those idiotic ideas that we used to be derided for on here as wildly exaggerating when we suggested the ECB would do it to make room for the Hundred. In future, players will only be exposed to 50 over cricket as youths, or when they play for England. What could possibly go wrong?
These days, the ECB are defended from accusations that they are deliberately malignant, that they aren’t really trying to kill cricket as a game in favour of a cash cow of 16.4 over thrashes. It’s probably true as well, they aren’t out to wreck the game on purpose. The problem is that it’s hard to tell what they’d do differently if they were.
We’ve had something of a break on here over the last couple of months, but as the cricketing summer gets under way, we’re back in the saddle.
Comments on today’s knockabout match below.
Being Outside Cricket 
I might give the T/20 a look in but I’m more interested in Middlesex v Glamorgan.
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Meanwhile, WI Vs Ire live on the BBC website at the moment. Was hoping to see my man Holder have a bat, but Ireland will have to take a few wickets first.
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Apparently it’s national Women’s County Cricket day today… with 32+ counties involved…
Who knew? I might have bothered struggling to get to The Rose Bowl today if I’d known…
#FTECB
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Andrew Flintoff being a better captain than Michael Vaughan now that neither of them play for England any more, example 1: (talking about Alex Hales)
“Everyone is quick to judge him and quick to have their opinions but I don’t know the lad’s personal position,” the former England captain said. “Rather than a cricketer, we’re talking about a lad here. I think that’s got to be addressed – where he is as a person as opposed to where he is as a cricketer”
The 41-year-old…dismissed concerns that the England team might have been distracted by any controversy surrounding Hales during this year’s tournament. “Whenever England play sport there is noise around it,” Flintoff insisted. “I never understood it. You’re there to play cricket. You practise hard, you work hard, you get on with it. Your job doesn’t change because someone else is in the dressing room’
That’s you told, ECB hierarchy!
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I so agree. When we heard reports alleging that KP unsettled the team, I just couldn’t imagine, for example, Anderson, at the start of his run up, thinking “I’m not going to bowl my best today ‘cos KP’s playing”.
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