Ill-thought and unwanted

Sad to close my last blog piece for around ten days on a downer, but those of you who read the article in the Derby Telegraph today on Mark Nicholas will know where this is going. If you didn't, then you can do so at:

http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/sport/Loring-slams-Nicholas-axe-smaller-class-counties/article-2342275-detail/article.html

Regular readers will know my thoughts on this, and Mr Nicholas' comments are as ill-judged as they are ill-informed. For him to suggest that Derbyshire merge with Nottinghamshire is nothing but stupid, certainly not the comments of a supposedly intelligent man. So both sets of fans would put aside decades of rivalries and support a composite team, would we? To use a fairly apposite quote from Wayne's World, "Yeah, and monkeys might fly out my butt." There's a greater chance of Mr Nicholas being the winning horse in next year's Derby.

His comment about "the balance sheet should determine who lives on" is also somewhat strange, given that his ex-county are in a somewhat parlous state and only kept afloat by a wealthy benefactor. If we were to get rid of those that were a financial burden to the game, the chances are that the ones with Test grounds might be the least viable. Hey, we could get rid of them, sell their grounds for development and split the proceeds between the counties that make a go it financially, like Derbyshire. Just a (similarly crass) thought.

I'm also irked by comments such as "That's what we're... about, developing players for England." Doesn't entertainment come into it then? Doesn't local interest? We've produced the likes of Malcolm, Cork, Morris, Barnett and Blackwell in the last twenty years who have reached national selection. How many have Hampshire produced? As Keith Loring says, how do we determine who goes from the current structure, as if it is on trophies gained there will be less successful teams out there than us.

What I would really like to see is people like Mark Nicholas and Steve James, who wrote a similar piece on Derbyshire recently without any reference to facts, to visit, see what is happening and then write an apologetic reply. They won't, in all likelihood, because it's probably too much hassle to drive "oop north." Ill-informed people annoy me, like an idiot on 606 last night who claimed that Derbyshire were full of Kolpaks, when we only have one, in Robin Peterson. I've no issue with an opinion, as long as it can be backed up by fact.

Which is where Mark Nicholas went wrong really.

Anyway, this is my last blog piece for a week and a half, unless I find a computer in the hotel in Spain, when it will just be a quick piece. Thanks for your continued interest, or should I just say what the cricketer said after he slid on the wet outfield.

Gracias...