New EU Directive on International Cricket

The European Union today passed a new directive with regards to the amount of international cricket that any citizen of its states (i.e. England) can play.

The new legislation has come about as a result of a delegation of England players who complained that they currently have to play too much international cricket.

Taking Paul Collingwood and Jimmy Anderson as test cases (as they are members of the test, ODI and T20 sides) EU commissioners were astounded to hear that each player could have played over 100 days international cricket in 2009. That is nearly one day in three and at least twice as many as EU or Domestic MPs work each year.

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England are the Andrew Cole of International Cricket

It was once said that Andrew Cole needed at least five chances for every goal. This probably explains why the former Man Utd, Newcastle, Arsenal and Man City player didn’t play much for England.

Watching England play South Africa in Cape Town and throwing away potential match winning chances again and again, one can only come to the conclusion that England are trying to imitate Cole in their profligacy. I have counted at least four times when England have missed big chances to take a stranglehold on this test.

1. Dropping Smith when the Proteas were 1/1 – if Swann had snaffled that chance Kallis would have been in after only seven balls and an already demoralised SA could have collapsed like they did at Kingsmead.

2. Failing to capitalise when SA were 129/5 – the partnership between Kallis and Boucher meant that it was even stevens at the end of day one.

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Can mediocre England emulate Lazarus?

According to Jimmy Anderson’s Twitter postings, one of the first things twelve members of the England squad did on arriving in Johannesburg was to get stuck in a lift for an hour. Coming after the 6-1 thrashing against Australia, England fans can only pray that their side’s campaign improves after this inauspicious start.

England are not the worst of the eight sides competing for the ICC Champions Trophy. That honour falls to the West Indies Cricket Board XI who are ranked one place below England’s seventh in the ICC ODI rankings. Unfortunately, the WICB XI are not in England’s group so Andrew Strauss and his side face a tough battle to even win a match let alone qualify for the semi-finals.

To make matters even harder, England’s first game in Group B is against the brilliant Sri Lankans

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Much against my better judgement (as ODI is becoming a very tired format and having a seven match series is just pure greed), I tuned into the 3rd ODI between England and Australia at The Rose Bowl yesterday. Once again, England were woeful with the bat, which contributed to another turgid affair where it was obvious Australia were going to win for the last 30 overs. The debate on the abolition of ODI can wait for another day but whilst this format is still a big part of the international calendar England need a new plan especially when it comes to batting.

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