Everyone wants to be the spinner

Fresh from Monty being seriously shown up by Swann / Swanny / The Swannster / Swannarooney / Swanndabidozie in India, the Windies squad is announced with yet another sure fire mega hit for the future in the form of Adil Rashid. All I can see in this selection by the old farts in the ICC is just a nod to other vaguely respected old farts elsewhere that, yes, yes, they do still expect big things from the lad, despite him moving on very very little over the summer just gone. When was the last time 3 spinners were in a single squad that was meant to be taken seriously? What a waste of time. Presuming that only 1 spinner will actually play, 1 will carry drinks and one will not even be told in person that he's not getting on the plane in the first place, why bother? Elsewhere in the squad assuming we're also playing 3 dedicated pace men, there's 1 spare wicky, a spare bowler and a spare batsman (please let it be Bell...) but 2 spare spinners is apparently the order of the day?

If there's no room for Vaughan, why get Rashid's hopes up? Pointless.

Vaughan Free, Part 2

Welcome back to the Vaughan Free project. After a successful release back in to the wild (the video footage of which seems to have got lost somewhere in Dave the Shoe's Lada, but may well resurface when the Domino's boxes are removed) a glimpse of the first Vaughan released into the desperately bleak wilderness of what might be Exeter has made its way into the public domain.

You can see that he/she (never did get the sexing thing sussed) must have shed his skin* recently due to the bright sheen on it's coat. The little critter seems to have found some sort of large rodent which it has mauled into a bloody mess. Isn't that cute?

* Vaughan skins, and other shed pelts are occasionally available for sale at www.skins.net if you're that way inclined. Weirdo.

DANGER: THAR BE FALSE IDOLS!

Dear Cricket fans. It has come to my attention about an unpleasant happening slowly strengthening it's grip on the impressionable working classes. Details are still thin on the ground, but we have agents RS and SB (who may or may not used to have been a batsman, - it is a confidential matter), but a number of pieces of this jigsaw representing this seedy underworld have come to light:

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

If you do notice anything untoward please please let me know. Maybe you work in tie rack and notice an increased sales levels of head scarves. Maybe you see people talking about how their favourite international cricket team actually won something. We're in this together.

Sign up!

Today I did two things, both of which seemed, at the time, to be a matter of life and death, due to the rest of the day being on an IT training course I wanted to escape. These two things were:

1) Bought Warwickshire CCC membership for 2009
2) Bought T20 finals day tickets

I would suggest that you, yes you, should do something similar soon too. Warwickshire have introduced a chuffing handy membership level this year of an "associate", which is basically for house bound old boys or well... me this year.

Having just acquired a second child I have little chance to go to many matches this year, but as I had already bought Ashes members tickets I had to be a member still in order to use the things! As it turns out though £50 gives be membership with no included entry to Bears domestic fixtures but all the rest of the shiny things such as Beyond The Boundary! This is one seriously classy magazine, as you can clearly see for yourself. It's shiny, and very occasionally the articles in it aren't amazingly thinly veiled adverts for their sponsors.

The sexiest bit of all of this though, is that with the good lady wife and myself going to the Ashes and T20 finals day mean that I've already saved £60 on ticket prices. Woaaahhhh there Leslie! Oh yeah, you heard me... but... That's *already* a £10 return on the membership fees! I could go into business with this tasty little thing I've found. The club finance dudes are going to flip when they find out! Hope this doesn't affect the redevelopment plans that the Tory counsellors are pouring scorn over.

Have you done the same with your near by grotty northern, or snooty southern, clubs? If you actually ARE me, then yes you have. If not, I don't know. Go find out!

40W21W - Call ME bland will you, Alison Mitchell?

Yesterday Grayahamemem Swann became the second human person in all of humanity in the universe of intergalactic hyperspace to take 2 wickets in their first test over. He was the 1st person for about 40 minutes, then TMS remembered Richard Johnson (but then that was at home to the Zimbabwegians, so hardly counts) Certainly a very impressive feat, especially from a spinner who has been the over looked second spinner for a number of years, principally through the actions of Duncan Fletcher. It's been many a person who has said that Swann just isn't cut out for the test arena, being too bits-and-pieces-y, and it'll be interesting to see what will happen after the next test and the sub-continent is a memory again. With Pieterson seemingly liking the idea of bowling himself as a 2nd spinner once in a while it's hard to see how he will justify his place. Indeed, he's *officially* in for Broad in the first India test, what happens if he's back for the 2nd one? Personally I'd reckon on Jimmy sitting out instead...

In the mean time... Caption competition anyone?*


* Excluding Ceci... you know what to do...

Swannywoowoo's dayboo

Swann gets his dayboo in the wee small hours tomorrow. England will have a whole 1.75 spinners tomorrow, which is the most since Old Man Udal helped Monty out in India 2006*. They'd been doing reasonably well with the usual 1.25 spinners or occasionally with an extra .1 when Vaughan fancied a bash at it, but that extra half will hopefully make a pleasant difference.

* I can use statsguru, me.

Know your teams. FAIL.

Looking through the plans for Warwickshire's new developments due to be goin' dahn at Edgbaston soon. All very pretty, wouldn't you say?


Whilst it's possibly something of an omen to call the image file "new_ground_2_small.jpg", we have slightly more pressing issues if the new scoreboard is going to be no bloody better than the old one.