Monty and Modi sitting in a tree...

So... This whole IPL thing is finally going to happen to the brits. Well, actually to the English and theoretically to the Welsh, and who cares about the others?

Anywho, Pietersen is gonna go for a cool gazillion kerjiggers and Stuart Broad has already run off home crying. Both make sense, but in case no one else has noticed, Monty's keys are still very much in the bowl.

That's just daft.

Everyone has seen how great test players can make seriously shitty T20 players... Dravid, Ponting etc. Yet their names were so big, no one cared in the first year of IPL, and no one put enough gravity on the T20 internationals for them to be sidelined.

Monty.

Really?? Last year I saw Warwickshire host a T20 against North Hants. The Steelbacks wouldn't even pick Monty despite him being available. No wonder really. Who seriously thinks that Monty, who is a distant memory from the England ODI squad, and Only played 11 T20 matches ever (of which one international, in Ozzville), is a going concern for the IPL?

This isn't even a case of lining up against the wall in P.E. and getting picked last... No one is there to make up the numbers... Poor sod.

What's worse? Failing or being unrequired?

...gland win.... luck... 7-43... batting at 3... gain bad light has... Taylor 154... ntle drizzl....

So a 2-0 win, just about what was expected, but as ever against the odds at many times in the middle. Danny boy picked up 2 gongs, with Strauss as the other man player of the series and Jimmy and Monty a man player of the match each. Well done good people, except anyone at all called James Michael Anderson (Born July 30, 1982, Burnley, Lancashire). You know who you are.

Almost as much discussion (on TMS at least) has fallen around the ginges, and as a fellow ginge I generally feel the guilt and therefore the urge to stick the knife in too. But given that so often it's only a couple of players who define the match in either direction, when you are clearly not one of them, what's worse: to have failed when possibly that could have been you, or to just never get a chance either way. In terms of the latter, Monty in the third test sadly wasn't allowed to say anything. He just got a bad LBW call against him to close Englands innings and then stood at long leg for the rest of the time, save for 11 measley overs for little more than sympathy from Vaughan.

At least Bell and Collingwood both had numerous chances to do something, they were involved, and noted and discussed (albeit for only 4 innings, not 6, which I'm sure annoyed them - bet they'd have preferred to be spending tomorrow putting on a 150 partnership to win the match). They were tested, they failed, the SORN is in the post. Monty just stood there, not needed, not useful. Obviously he stopped some runs. A given that he should have stopped more, but that goes for everyone. Clearly he was the absolute man in the 2nd test, but that was almost a fortnight ago. Nearly long enough for echo from his appeals to have faded. Nearly.

So how would you react if you were monty had had basically just punched a clock for three and a half days? Maybe there's nothing of substance there at all, but I think I'd have felt cheated or dejected for never being needed.

As for the ginges, give Bell back to Warwickshire please. Just to get them back into CC Div 1 again, and he's all Moores again.