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It’s has recently been revealed that the English cricket team is no longer representative of the population as a whole. In the early part of last decade the English cricket team was made up with the majority of players who’ve been to state schools, with nearly 80 percent of all the players coming from this background. Now however there has been a significant reversal and over 75 percent of all players in the team come from private schools. This is a particularly surprising figure when you consider that nearly 95 percent of the population attend state schools rather than private. It seems as if the figures are even more skewed when you consider the batsmen on the team and the runs they are able to score. Just 10 years ago over 80 percent of all the runs being scored for the English cricket team were by players who came from a state school background. In the last 10 years however this number has fallen dramatically and only 10 percent of runs are being scored by players who attended state school. It seems that now for players who dream of playing for England it is going to be a serious advantage to come from a privileged background. Private school students generally get access to better coaching, genuine grass pitches and are also more networked into the cricket world. The recent revelations have led the cricket board to start investigating the social background of its players but have stated that they have not issued any further comments about the background of their players. It is obvious that something needs to be done about the quality of cricket coaching and pitches at state schools if they want to remain competitive in producing players who can bat for England. The Yorkshire cricket team have recently been being devastated by Matt Coles, and his recent performance has meant that the county of Kent is on form to win the competition they are playing at Headingley. Mr Coles is an all-round cricket player who is aged 22 and he has recently been included in the Lions squad which is going to face off against the West Indies. He has also recently scored his first century and it is expected that he is going to be able to add a great deal to the Lions cricket team. His bowling is perhaps even more impressive than his batting and in a recent match against Yorkshire he has been able to put nine of their players out in one innings for only 175 runs. This has meant that the Kent team have really been under some serious pressure to perform. In fact at the end of the match there were still four balls to go but the team played on no more. Rob Key and Sam Billings also performed admirably for Kent as the opening batsmen and together scored 57 runs in just 13 overs. It was clear from early on in the game that Yorkshire were not really going to be able to beat back Kent in this match and the Kent batsmen were simply too strong from the start and it was obvious that Yorkshire had scored far too few runs to stand a chance of making a comeback. At the lowest point in the game, Yorkshire had only 22 runs and had already had four people out in just six overs. It was perhaps likely that some amount of psychology came into the match as the team were just being throttled from the beginning and making a comeback might have seemed like a complete impossibility. Five years ago Keith Barker’s dreams of a life as a professional footballer were over. He had played youth football for England but after joining Blackburn Rovers he did not make the first team and the highlight of his time there was a period on loan to Rochdale. After being released by Blackburn, however, his career as a professional sportsman has had resurgence this time on the cricket field. He had actually played youth cricket for Lancashire and if Blackburn had not offered him a contract at their soccer academy he may well have joined them. His new career as a cricketer is with Warwickshire and ironically, last week he took a maiden County Championship five wickets against his native county, Lancashire. They did have the chance to sign Barker, 25, when he left football but he had been offered a contract at Warwickshire after scoring a century on his second team debut against Hampshire and being recommended by former England batsman David Lloyd. Taking advice from his Godfather, former Lancashire and West Indies captain, Clive Lloyd, Barker signed for Warwickshire as a batsman. Then the director of cricket there, Ashley Giles, decided that he had the potential to be an all-rounder. He was tutored by Warwickshire bowling coach, Graeme Welch, and is now enjoying far more success on the cricket field than he ever did playing football. Because of injuries to Ireland’s paceman Boyd Rankin and Chris Woakes, the England one-day international, Barker has been given the new ball. He has risen admirably to the challenge with a tally of nine wickets from two games. With Ashley Giles being an England selector Barker has a useful ally in launching an international career. It is distinctly possible that he could be playing for the England Lions next month against the West Indies 2011 was a great year for English cricket however, 2012 has not begun very well and the team have been brought back down to earth. They recently suffered a serious defeat against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates and then had a draw in Sri Lanka. Despite all of this, the team have not yet met the most challenging opponents of the year, South Africa. Swann has stated that he is confident the team will bounce back this summer and start playing as they were in 2011. It is also possible that it is going to be the year that he becomes the most prolific wicket taker in English history, even surpassing the incredible Jim Laker. Mr Swann has remains rather modest about this potential achievement although it does seem very likely that he is going to be able to manage it this year. Mr Swann has already surpassed many of the best players in history with his wicket taking ability and Mr Laker is the only cricket player which he has yet to beat. Mr Swann is not a player who tends to dwell on statistics and he seems to be largely unaware of the significance of his achievement, a recent interview suggested that he was not even aware of how close he was to beating the all-time record. He does have an advantage over the next few weeks as the match conditions are very much suited to him. The chances are that over the summer he is going to surpass the record, and continue to put distance between him and Laker for the rest of his playing career. It is also possible that he is going to give England its first double century of victims who have been subject to his off spin technique. Kevin Pietersen recently scored his first century in the Twenty20 cricket match which meant that the Delhi Daredevils were able to gain a victory which has led them to be the highest ranked team in the Indian Premier league. The player scored the winning runs for the match with five balls to spare and he ended the match with a final score of 103 runs. His performance in the match was very impressive and in order to get a century, he only needed 64 balls to be bowled. The innings was a really masterful event and Pietersen’s performance really made up for a lack of good playing from other players who normally perform better. The team started off very badly and one of the players was out for just one run. Shortly after this another player was taken for just seven runs and this meant that Pietersen stepped onto the pitch much sooner than expected. Despite the poor performance of the batsmen to go before him, he still performed incredibly well and decided to make up for their lack of effort. There were certainly moments of luck during his batting performance, but it was clear that most of his achievement came from pure skill. This is the first century that Pietersen has managed to score in a Twenty20 match and his previous best score was 79 during a match in 2007 where he was playing for England against the Zimbabwean cricket team. Before this match, the Delhi Daredevils were not in the top position of the league. However, after Pietersens performance the team have been taken to the top of the league ahead of the Rajasthan Royals. Without the performance that Pietersen was able to deliver in this match it would have been likely that the team would have slipped further down the rankings. The most valuable player in English cricket has recently been named as Graeme Swann. These figures have been put together by the ranking system for professional cricketers, the PCA. One of the reasons why he has been ranked so high is because he managed to take 10 wickets against the Sri Lankan cricket team earlier this year. This has meant that in the last five matches he has taken nearly 40 wickets, which is a very impressive figure. The second highest ranked player was Kevin Pietersen but Swann managed to edge it thanks to his recent performances. The prize for being the most valuable player in the UK includes a £2000 prize that can be donated to a charity of the players choice. In this case Swann has chosen to give the money to the Lowe Syndrome Trust. This is the third time that he has been named the most valuable player in the UK and the previous years were 2009 and 2010, after he had a great deal of success in playing teams from Bangladesh and South Africa. The match where he took 10 wickets led to a draw in the capital city of Sri Lanka, Colombo. The figures for the match meant that England were able to maintain their number one world ranking for a longer time. The vice president of the consulting firm, FTI, Sebastien Matthews has commented, “We congratulate Mr Swann on his incredible win. Not only has his performance this winter been incredible but he has been a valuable player for years. To see such a close competition this year between the top players was very exciting but it is great that Mr Swann finally came out on top.” Swann also came up at the top of the individual statistics ranking. Cricket officials and fans have expressed strong approval for the choice of David Morgan as president of the Glamorgan cricket club, and certainly it would be hard to find anyone with better qualifications for the position. At the general annual meeting in March, Morgan was appointed as four-year president by a unanimous vote. Glamorgan chairman Barry O’Brien said he was very pleased that Morgan accepted their invitation, which means he will be president through to the Ashes Test at Cardiff in 2015, and stated that he (Morgan) is “. . . one of the world’s great cricket administrators . . .”. Mr. Morgan said he was honoured to be offered the position and plans to work with all members to further the club’s success. Morgan has extensive experience in the business world as well as the world of cricket; until 2001 he was the commercial director of European Electrical Steels. Since then he has held various positions in cricket administration , and was awarded the OBE in 2008. In the late 1990′s he was chairman of the working party that organised the ECB, and during his chairmanship of that body he updated its corporate governance so well that it has become a model for other sports’ governing bodies. Morgan has served as president of the International Cricket Council and as chairman of both Glamorgan and the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board). During his tenure with these organisations, Glamorgan won the AXA Equity and Law trophy (1993) and the Britannic Assurance Championship (1997) and in 2005 England won back the Ashes. When he was declared as Lord MacLaurin’s successor for Glamorgan, it was with the unanimous belief that he will be “a safe pair of hands” at the helm of the club. Of his former achievements in cricket administration, Mr. Morgan said that he had good people working with him, both on and off the field, and he had the good fortune to be ‘in the right place at the right time’. Most of us would agree that a hard-playing cricketer who has just spent a month scrambling in the Test series in Sri Lanka might feel he deserves a bit of a rest. Some of the series players opted to continue playing in the IPL in India, making good money while they’re at it, and some are presumably resting up, but we have to applaud the ones who chose another option. England wicket keeper Matt Prior and wicketkeeping coach Bruce French chose to cycle for charity in the 100 mile South Downs Trail from Winchester to Eastbourne. The object is to raise money for the children’s hospice Chestnut Tree House, near Arundel. Matt said he became interested in the charity when he visited with some Sussex teammates a couple of years ago, and decided he wanted to contribute to the cause. This Sunday two more of cricket’s members will be running instead of pedaling for charity. England coach Andy Flower and team psychologist Mark Bawden will take on the London Marathon, in aid of three charities that all have a special connection for the coach. Flower said he hasn’t been able to train as much as he’d have liked, but he was running post-game laps around the field in Sri Lanka so he’ll probably do just fine. Another major contributor is legendary cricketer Sir Ian Botham, who will also be pounding the pavement in aid of research to beat leukemia and lymphoma. Sir Botham has a 25 year record of charity work, and has raised both money and awareness of the killer diseases, to notable effect. When ‘celebrities’ get involved in non-profit activities, it is often more for publicity and sponsor-recognition than for purely altruistic motives – not that the motive matters so much, as long as the money comes in – but it’s good to see, and they are to be commended. After their victory of eight-wickets over Sri Lanka, Alastair Cook believes that normal service from England’s batsmen has now been resumed. This year started terribly for England with Pakistan beating them in the six innings, with around 200 fours, as they finished a 3-0 whitewash.
In the subsequent series of one-day matches, England was able to come up and a number of test specialists who went out to Sri Lanka one week earlier to check out their techniques. However, all the high expectations were smashed in the first innings when they made only 193, and then eventually they went down by 75 runs, making a sequence of four games lost in a row. In the second Test, finally England was able to put in their best total of the year. They made 460 and cashed in a winning 94 for the loss of only two wickets. With a 94 and 49 not out, Cook was England’s main performer, and Kevin Pietersen was awarded with the “Man of the match” honours for his amazing performance on day five with a 151 and 42 not out. Cook is now convinced that things are back on the right track. He was not embarrassed by the fact that they had a rough winter programme this year. Since they won the ICC Test rankings last summer, their plan was to show, and prove, that they could be the greatest in the sub-continent. Even though their plan didn’t work, Cook still believes that England could be a better side. England came back home after spending the last few months in conditions that are considered to be the most difficult sporting conditions in the world. The intense heat and humidity made their sport in Sri Lanka one of the toughest jobs they have encountered and Cook admits that he is now ready for a change of tempo.
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