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In between frequent breaks for rain, the England Lions managed some good play against the West Indies. Their bowlers were sharing around the wickets with Stuart Meaker and local boy, Jack Brooks, taking three each. Jade Dembach and Matt Coles took the other four between them. Brooks’ approach is so individualistic and his simple bowling action so direct that it is refreshing to see. This could be explained by the fact that he came quite late to county cricket having been playing in the Oxford leagues until he was in his late twenties. He therefore missed out on having a certain style drummed into him at one of the cricket schools if he had been scouted when he was in his teens. The West Indies’ captain, Darren Sammy, surprisingly, had chosen not to play and now they surely have a problem in how to fit him into the team for the Test match at Lords. One option is that he could replace off-spinner Shane Shillingford and then Samuels could bowl any spin if required. Although that seems unlikely unless the weather improves. Because of the weather conditions right now there is so much seam movement that batting is a tricky game. Not that this hindered Bravo too much and indeed, Stuart Meaker’s fast pace even seemed to help his scoring. Samuels as well managed to cope without too many problems. Both of them played positively, playing the ball late and being more selective in their shots. Bravo had some great drives to the boundary showing signs of his cousin, Brian Lara. So it was not all defensive play from the West Indies and things look interesting for the Test especially if there is an improvement in the weather and we actually get some sunshine. England captain, Andrew Strauss, continues to be dogged by the bad form and bad fortune that has been following him for a while now. It was not only the rain clouds making things gloomy for him at Trent Bridge, against Nottinghamshire. He dropped three balls, two of them consecutively, and made only two with the bat. He dropped Michael Lumb on 95 and then again on the next ball. Lumb went on to make 162. He had hoped to sharpen up against Stuart Broad but was caught behind from left-arm fast bowler, Harry Gurney, who he had not come across before. The early-season conditions have been favouring bowlers but Strauss has only made 57 runs in his last four outings. Coupled with the fact that he has only scored one century in his last 50 tests, it doesn’t look encouraging for the opening test next week. It was yet another day of dressing room to the field and then back again for Kevin Pietersen at New Road. Worcestershire did, however, manage to gain their first batting points of the season. Elsewhere the weather was so bad that there was little other play anywhere. David Collier, currently chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, will not be succeeding Haroon Lorgat as chief executive of the International Cricket Council. Former South African wicketkeeper, Dave Richardson has been picked by the ICC board to take over from Lorgat.
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’. |
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