Weekend Warmer

It's been a busier week than many of late in the world of cricket, but a week of late shifts at work has meant that my time to blog has been severely curtailed. Now, on Friday night, I've got time to comment on them at last.

Thanks for your continued kind comments about the 'A-Z of Derbyshire Cricket'. For the benefit of those wondering how the sequence leaped from K to M, L and Garnet Lee started off the continuation of the 'old' series, before I relaunched what had gone previously in response to reader comments. It seemed a bit of a cheat to print it again so soon afterwards, so there you go. Those who want to see it can do so by scrolling down the page and it is in the left hand pane of previous articles in the past month.

The club site had an interesting piece this week on what players are getting up to in the winter. As I suggested a week or so back, none of them appear to be heading to Australia this winter, which hardly comes as a surprise. Scott Elstone's Twitter account towards the end of the summer seemed to suggest that he was going, but presumably his county contract has changed those plans.

I'm with the club on that one. When three out of three who went away last winter failed to benefit, it suggests that the expense simply isn't worthwhile. I've no doubt that the life experiences for the players concerned are invaluable, while Ross Whiteley found love. Yet that's hardly the point - we could get players on Take Me Out and save a fortune...

Elsewhere around the country, a number of players have signed new deals with their respective counties, though in most cases few of us knew they were out of contract anyway and I don't think any of them would have strengthened our squad. Discussions are doubtless going on behind the scenes that we will hear about in due course, but at this stage it appears that there are fewer established players on the market than in previous years.

Thanks to Martin Chandler, who got in touch with a link to a excellent article he has written  on Alan Ward, while thanks also go to Bob for sending me on the full picture of Johny (the spelling he prefers) Marsden, which I have great pleasure in posting on the left to highlight a very nice, high action from a young Derbyshire bowler of considerable talent

Over in India, MS Dhoni has been critical of the batsman-friendly wickets for the one-day series against Australia. He is absolutely right. A true game of cricket offers batsmen an opportunity to score runs but bowlers a chance of wickets if they bend their backs and work hard on the ball to obtain movement. On the evidence of the series so far, the game would have been equally well served by siting a bowling machine at either end and lobbing balls down on a length for the batsman to hit as far as they could.

Such wickets make for dull cricket. If you merely want to see fours and sixes it's probably fine, but for those of a more discerning nature, cricket is - has got to be - much more than that. It's seeing a top bowler make a batsman work for runs and that player be good enough to get them. Or seeing a fine batsman stopped in his tracks by a ball of considerable guile from a bowler who got the help he needed from a sporting track.

I hope they sort the current imbalance for the West Indians, who have started their tour over there. A certain Mr Chanderpaul, erstwhile of this parish, started his tour with a century in around three hours of batting.

I can almost see his eyes lighting up from here...

Enjoy your weekend.