A little joy (at last) from 'The Hindered'

Derbyshire's chances of having a good go at the One Day Cup this year increased considerably yesterday.

Only Wayne Madsen was selected for 'The Hindered', which leaves us, on the face of it, in a pretty good position.

I won't pretend to pay enough attention to the competition to know if there are further drafts. But although the likelihood of players dropping out and needing replaced remains, there shouldn't be too much difference between our first choice side and the one that has taken the field over the past couple of years.

Having said that, the new Scottish T10 competition overlaps with both of the above tournaments and it may be that one or two of our players could be sought after. The competition runs in Aberdeen between August 16 and 31 and six men's franchises – representing Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Inverness, Perth, and Dundee – will play 34 matches across 16 days.

I find T10 an even more curious beast than The Hindered. I am between two and a half and three hours from Aberdeen, closer than many reading this, but a five-six hour round trip for a ninety minute game holds zero appeal. People do it all the time for football, but these are clubs of long histories and fan bases. I would likely do it were Derbyshire playing, but a newly-concocted city franchise? I would hazard a guess that no one participating in this tournament will live in Perth, Inverness or Dundee and I am unsure how many people from there will get behind it.

Good luck to Scottish Cricket. It is innovative, it might work and it brings top level cricket to a part of the country where it is not often seen (with the honourable exception of Kyle Coetzer and Dallas Moir..)

I still have scary thoughts about my last cricket trip to Aberdeen, many years ago. My club had progressed through several stages of the small clubs cup and were drawn against a fairly big, yet still deemed 'small' club from that area.

We endured an awful trip up there, taking closer to four hours because of road works, but our opponents had told us a nice lunch awaited. After enjoying it, we headed for the ground and chased leather as our opposition posted nearly 300 in 40 overs.

Then it rained, pretty heavily. When the covers were taken off, we found rain had got through them and left a very obvious large puddle on a length. Despite our protestations to the contrary, the umpires insisted we batted to complete the match and, despite a valiant effort with the ball flying at one end, we didn't get close.

Back in the pub afterwards, a little disgruntled, we were even more so when the opposition captain came over, said thanks for the game and handed us the bill for our lunch...

Was that the worst? Oh no, on the way back the windscreen wipers in the car in which I was a passenger stopped working. So for a good part of the journey home, through persistent rain, we cleared the windscreen by alternately pulling on a piece of string to pull the wipers back and forth. 

Oh, and four of us went down with food poisoning, victims of a fish soup that can't have been especially fresh.

Aberdeen? I think I will pass, thanks...