That was a bit of a circus around Bothams' captaincy as well, don't forget.

No great shame in getting beat by the best team in the world but if he doesn't have the hunger any more then it is the right time to depart. Also gives Cook and the new opener time to gel ahead of the Ashes next year.

Prime candidates to replace Strauss at the top of the order? Carberry or Root clearly at the top of the list with possibles including the likes of Chopra, Compton (even though he isn't an opener), Hales, Mitchell in the selector's thoughts.

Fast bowling takes care of itself with the current crop we've got.
Spinning-wise I think it's time for Kerrigan to tour with the full squad especially if it's a choice between him and Tredwell.

the RGD Willis era must have been worse than the Beefy times ?

Aye, I was just thinking of other examples off the top of my head.

the Willis era was dire - a fast bowler & no.11 batsman should never be skipper of a Test side IMO !

at least with Beefy & Lamby the menu was varied ? it's a pity Onions wasn't around at the time......

Carberry, Hales & Mitchell are all having pretty mediocre seasons in the Championship. None has anything like the weight of runs needed to make a convincing case, although Mitchell has just carried his bat for a ton this morning. I'd put Joe Denly & Chris Nash ahead of those three.

Compton is the only man with 1,000 Championship runs before the current round of matches. Chopra has been fairly consistent for a couple of years now and at 26 has 7 or 8 seasons of fairly regular first class cricket behind him.

A tour of India would be a big challenge for someone of Root's inexperience but he looks like the most convincing long-term bet by a distance, and is in decent enough form to boot. Alternatively Compton could bat at 3 with Trott moving up to open. Otherwise I'd rate Chopra as the best bet.


Kerrigan still has a long way to go for me, having seen him mercilessly battered by Pietersen at Guildford last month. KP took over 100 runs off him at almost two runs per ball in a situation where Lancs were looking to enforce the follow on. India might not have anyone as aggressively dominant as that, but I wouldn't fancy him to trouble them in their own back yard on that evidence.

The selectors generally seem to favour an old pro for back-up spin options on the Subcontinent, e.g. Pat Pocock in 1984/5, when we came from behind to beat India, or Shaun Udal a few years back when we levelled the series with Flintoff captaining the side. I would imagine Swann, Panesar, Patel and Tredwell will remain at the forefront of the selectors' thoughts in the spin department.

Mustard keeping wicket too

to be fair, i'm only 27, and only watched cricket ssince '93, not bad when one of your first cricket memories is the Ball Of The Century! Only real circus I can recall is the hoo-hah over Nasser (and i don't even recall what the issue was). Sky just go a long way to blowing the issues up, especially since they've had full test series coverage.

I hate Sky, is it obvious?

Well I've only got two extra years on you, so that's no excuse.



Sky are a shower of c***s, I'll grant you that. I can't stand what they've done to football and, whisper it, I can't stand some of the baggage that's come into RL with their coverage. The latter's not usually a popular opinion, but there you go.

There is a heck of a lot of "blowing up" that Sky do surrounding their coverage, but that's always been around in cricket. Controversy in the English game, particularly surrounding the captaincy, has often been more widely reported, inspected and dissected more than other sports in the past. I can only guess at the reasons for that, possibly due to the image of cricket being a clean, pearly white sport and a symbol of old school virtues that some yearn to. Or I could be talking b*llocks.

You b*stard. I'd just about pushed that out of my mind until you posted that! Wasn't too pleasurable to watch from my point of view...

I always thought C4's coverage of the cricket was outstanding. I wish they never lost the TV contract.

Aye. I should say I was thinking more of the "news" coverage - papers and the like.

Kent beat Leicestershire by 147 runs

Whatever your thoughts on sky, and you certainly are not alone in what you say, in my opinion sports coverage in general through sky is far, far superior to anything that has ever been broadcast previously. The number of camera angles, the depth of coverage and the analysis is all far better than yesteryear.

Think back to the days when there was next to no live rugby league on at all, midweek sport special and/or sportsnight for midweek football and no televised overseas cricket tours whatsoever!!!! The sports fan is spoilt these days

Their major competitor sport wise over here though is ITV and I reckon I could do a better job from my bedroom.

Great manufactured win for Yorkshire yesterday with Maggers rolling back the years. Rafiq seems to be a real gutsy player & is now way ahead of rashid. Who'd have predicted that 18 months ago?

Just hope we have a couple of weeks of dry weather and rain doesn't play a part in the promotion chase

I fear it may already have done. Haven't Yorkshire lost something like 40% of the available overs in the Championship this season?

Your starting to sound like a Lancastrian

Ravi-Bop = golden arm

Channel 4 started most of the cricket innovations - Sky just stole them when they won the coverage rights. Anyway, after the rumblings around Salford's fixture this weekend I'm going to withdraw from the debate as I doubt I'll be rational when talking about them!

Lancashire choked in yet another semi-final on Saturday. 11 defeats in 12 one day semi-finals since 1999. Can we just go back to the two groups, winner of each goes to the final system, please?!

Think that's a tad harsh. I stand to be corrected, but to the best of my knowledge the production company is largely the same as 4 used, just that they're being paid by someone different now.

I'll hold my hands up on that, then, if it's true. I wasn't aware of that, I just saw Sky introduce hawkeye after 4, I seem to remember it being under a different name at the time as well, although that could be my mind playing tricks on me!

I do think that 4 started a lot of the innovations, Simon Hughes as third man and analyst, explaining things about the game to the masses. I do think Sky's coverage is good, I just don't like the added influence they have over differing sports.

There were two versions of what we all now call Hawkeye that were used in parallel, but once the ICC ratified Hawkeye and not the other one (name escapes me) for DRS purposes, there was only one system that was going to be used.

I agree that 4 started a lot of the things we now take for granted and while you have a point regarding Sky's influence, we're not all evil or hell-bent on world domination!

I'll take your word for that one mate.

I mean that I am, but I'm sure there's someone in the office that doesn't.