Rollercoaster Week

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

It's not about money

The Stanford games are not about money. Not about money at all. It's all about pride. How do I know this? Because Kevin Pietersen says so: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/england/7680092.stm

For me, people go down in my estimation when it is clear they are not telling the truth...