England v India, 5xODIs + 1xT20, 25 August - 7 September, 2014

That WI tour sounds like the best time to 'blood' him (Rashid, aka 'Roger'?) and at least one of the others you mention.

Rashid has been relatively successful across all formats this season. It helps that he's a leggie, and it would fit in with England's unspoken strategy of having everyone from 1 to 10 capable of scoring a ton. He's shite-hot in the field as well.

Still not sure he can survive the early embiggening of Dello and Trev.

He probably still has nightmares.

But if we're really moving on from Monty, Rashid's got every chance of getting a go, he bats, he fields well....you never know he might get the odd ball to turn.

Following Trev and Dello's predictions, he will be lucky to avoid being the new Chris Schofield or Ian Salisbury, or an amalgam of the worst of both.

I think the selectors have done well to ignore him and let him develop his own game at his own speed. Whether he will amount to much is open to debate, but I think we will begin to find out in the Caribbean.

In all honesty, I don't see much choice. Monty appears to be mentally flaky - and he will always be a liability in the field. Tredwell flights it nicely but doesn't spin it. After that? There's Adam Riley at Kent who gets wickets with his offies and Ravi Patel at Middlesex who is a SLAer - but his championship stats for this season when I last looked were something like 10 @ 50

Yet Kerrigan must be the incumbent, given his selection in a Test squad within the last few weeks?

I can't work that out. He practiced with the squad at Lords without formally being part of it: he was named in the squad for the test at Southampton and then got the slash. My guess is that the management came to the conclusion that he would still be flaky and let him go.

Kerrigan is rubbish. Terrible action, and mentally not up to it. Should be NTPFEA.

Anyway, the talented, instincitve, exciting young players that we see in county cricket will get dragged through the English development programs, and come out the other side as robots.

lardbucket wrote:Still not sure he can survive the early embiggening of Dello and Trev.

He's a perfectly cromulent option now...

Roy's only had one half of a good season in the last 3 and a half years. Hope it takes a bit more than that to make an England side, personally.

Rashid - mehyeah, he's done very well this season. He's finally made a decent breakthrough after years of Trevdellian semen burning a hole in his cricketing soul. If any spinner is likely to take wickets in Australasia, it's a leggie. But I'm still a bit meh.

Henry wrote:Kerrigan is rubbish. Terrible action, and mentally not up to it. Should be NTPFEA.

Anyway, the talented, instincitve, exciting young players imported from other countries that we see in county cricket will get dragged through the English development programs, and come out the other side as robots.

certain Trev meant to write that

Anyway, looks a guaranteed washout for game 1.

Summer's well over.

Rain delay, England getting lucky here……..Imagine how lucky they'd have been had the Tests been all rained out from the start.

Gods, it's the T20 WC Eng vs Ind 2013 on the telly instead of live cricket. Cook, Trott, Bell, Bresnan. Shameful. Absolutely shameful selections. How in Jupiter's name did the selectors get away with such a car crash.

Also, Jadeja is phallic. Sort of a giant smeg-oozing penis with arms and legs.

Bleak Bristol. We're moving into spring quite nicely here but seems like a wintry blast for the motherland. Can anybody remember rain ever washing out play/ a game in Zimbokia?

Brass Monkey wrote:Gods, it's the T20 WC Eng vs Ind 2013 on the telly instead of live cricket. Cook, Trott, Bell, Bresnan. Shameful. Absolutely shameful selections. How in Jupiter's name did the selectors get away with such a car crash.

Also, Jadeja is phallic. Sort of a giant smeg-oozing penis with arms and legs.

I dispute your definition. He's just the prepuce ... that useless bit of meat which always disappears when the going first gets hard; and often a bit slimy.

KP defends the IPL from blame claims for India's poor form in England.
http://sports.ndtv.com/england-vs-india-2014/news/228795-blaming-ipl-for-india-s-test-debacle-cheap-says-kevin-pietersen

Red wrote:Bleak Bristol. We're moving into spring quite nicely here but seems like a wintry blast for the motherland. Can anybody remember rain ever washing out play/ a game in Zimbokia?

Well it wiped out a whole bloody test in Aus, which is why Jamodis were inflicted apon us.

The first one is a washout but looks like there are also dull prospects for the Cardiff fixture on Wednesday.

Very harsh on a venue like Bristol which rarely gets international cricket to get a washout like this, don't know why there isn't a case for reserve days for ODIs these days.

I'm sure Cricket Boards around the World would welcome reserve days. The TV companies and players would not be so keen on it....

Well, they will always prefer live cricket to a blank day in the schedules... if they can get a Duckworth-Lewis result in a day then do so, but otherwise use the next day to get a game completed.

I've long thought they should bring in a rest day for test matches, to be used as a 6th day if 90 overs (a day's play worth) or more is lost to weather over the course of a match.