My apologies for not updating this blog quite as much as Seven and Seven Eighths, but at the moment I am a little cricketed out, and can’t really get enthused about a Champions League competition in the hit and giggle form of the game. While in Cornwall I missed both semi-finals, and the final of the Champions Trophy, won by Australia thanks to two centuries in a row from Shane Watson, and thus giving the lie to the line that the Australians are finished at the top end of the game. One only has to see how Sussex were demolished by New South Wales to tell you that. They have Brett Lee, Phil Hughes and Simon Katich playing – where is Matt Prior?
I shall expand more on the Surrey season in due course. The little bit of Wisden Cricketer handed over to Chris Adams is the usual mea non culpa bullshit we’ve learned to live with over the course of the ego’s career. Merely saying that once the player’s take the field it is all up to them isn’t going to cut the mustard. He has got rid of much of the “dead wood” as he would see it, but is no nearer getting the bowling line-up to take 20 wickets than we were when we were unceremoniously bundled out of the top flight. I do have to laugh at the glee that Wisden Cricketer’s scribe couldn’t suppress in his comments “no-one bemoans the loss of the Surrey strut”. Oh for christ’s sake – Surrey have been garbage for six or seven years now, and this team is as far away from Adam Hollioake’s outfit as I am from a major part in Hollyoaks. Pack it in, moron.
There’s an interview in WC with Graeme Swann by John Stern that is as tedious as it sounds, with Swann giving off his folksy charm and supposedly being in line for a captaincy slot in A Question of Sport with former sportsman turned TV whore Matt Dawson cited as a comparable figure. Jesus. However, in this piece Stern has a barb at Matthew Hoggard for his “intellectual” status that became grating. Where did that come from? I mention it only because Yorkshire have booted out Hoggard this week because “he wanted too much money”. Surrey? You there? Need a top line bowler not likely to be called up for internationals? Surrey?
Meanwhile England have decided to dispense with Steve Harmison for this winter’s tour. The Dope with the Mope put out the usual spin about it being hard to believe he isn’t one of the top five bowlers in the country, but the fact is that we are now six winters removed from his only decent showing on the road, and we have rather more recent memories of him trundling in bowling long-hops in Hamilton, and then bleating and moaning that he was homesick. Don’t look at others Steve, look at yourself. You have the talent – by bloody hell he has – but he hasn’t made it stick. I don’t blame England one bit.
No international cricket for a little bit, so the blog may become a photo fest and a reminiscence vehicle, but I will try to stick with it as best I can. Somerset v Trindad and Tobago is on right now. Please give my regards to anyone who cares. I thought Langer had left Somerset – I guess the lure of the rupee was just too strong. After all, it cured Tres’s homesickness / depression.
