It has been a funny week and a bit. It started with high-farce in Antigua and the West Indies administrators surpassing even their dizzying heights of incompetence. The ground was, literally, built on sand. Like the ground at North Sound (I am refusing to call it after Viv Richards until it is worthy of such a great cricketer), our garden has a bit of a drainage problem. We had it levelled and returfed a couple of years ago. The gardener used ‘a bit’ of sand and it seems okay now. He did not use 100% sand because that would have been stupid. I wonder if the Chuckle Brothers are on the WICB...
With one ground consigned to the sand pit it fell to the Antigua Recreation Ground (ARG) to stage a Test match with 36-hours notice. How could you expect them to do a good job given no notice? That didn’t stop them though and they produced a good cricket wicket. Moving the Test match to where the people ‘are’ also meant they could come and watch – a revolutionary idea. We saw a fantastic Test match in which England were denied by some excellent West Indies batting. England threw everything, including an injured Flintoff, at West Indies but they held on with nine wickets gone. Thrilling. Should Strauss have declared earlier? Probably, but then if we played using hindsight Chris Gayle would have batted first... Roll on Barbados.
Underlying all these events has been the on-going drama and revelations regarding Allen Stanford. I am no financial guru so I cannot really comment on what he did or didn’t do. What seems clear is that he is in a heap of trouble and the ECB are looking pretty silly. We can expect a lot more on this and this is interesting reading: http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/story/391500.html
Friday 20 February 2009
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2 comments:
Hindsight - ain't that one wonderful?
Great test match, poor Strauss, caught between a rock and a hard place. How could he have forced a follow-on or declared early knowing that Harmison and Freddie weren't 100% fit?
Sir Allen - we will see what he has done or not done ... though it looks like ECB has egg all over it's face. Back to dealing with the India board and IPL. Should have done that in the first place IMHO. What do you think about that?
Controversially I have sympathies with both of these.
I thought Strauss was right not to make them follow on -- nothing good seems to come out of flogging the bowling to death. What if he had not go them out a second time... I think he maybe left it a little too long to declare though.
I can see why the ECB wee keen on Stanford. He came along with cash at just the right time, filling a big void for England players who were looking longingly at the IPL. Having said that they look really stupid now...
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