Collingwood column inches

There have been a fair few column inches generated in the media regarding Derbyshire's move for Paul Collingwood and it is understandable. Mind you, it irks me considerably when our name is generally prefaced with "Second Division strugglers". I would happily kick the backside of the authors of such nonsense...

The other day I suggested that Collingwood may cost between £150K and £200K a season, which may or may not be the case. I based that figure on the reported £120K that Leicestershire paid to Matthew Hoggard, a man who doesn't have being the captain of a World Cup winning side on his CV, but it could be wide of the mark. Similarly, the length of contract 'offered' has been suggested elsewhere as three years, but since we have yet to meet with the player, I find it hard to see how such an offer can be in the public domain. If we were going to pay that sort of money and the player was going to get a three-year deal, I would expect some performance and appearance-related element to be in the deal. If the player was injured, or did badly, I don't think we'd be likely to pay top dollar, for example.

By the same token, I doubt that the player is the only iron in the fire and we will doubtless be talking to players and agents all the time from here. I don't expect a winter of revolving doors, but much will depend on who stays and who is available with what we need. I have few worries about the batting and the emergence of Tom Knight and Peter Burgoyne, as well as the hopeful re-emergence of Jake Needham, leaves spin fairly well catered for. Having said that, Burgoyne may not yet be ready for first team action and Knight, for all I know, could be heading  for university. If that was the case, I suspect we would be looking closely at Messrs Rafiq and Wainwright at Yorkshire, who could be good assets at the right age.

Similarly, we know that Steffan Jones is going, but if we also lost Greg Smith and Tim Groenewald we would need to bring in a seamer from somewhere, as that would be three gone. I would hope that any move for a senior English player might not preclude an overseas player and perhaps a seamer might be a winter target this time.

Anyway, it is all conjecture at this stage and the thinking money would still be on Collingwood opting to stay at the club where he learned the game. By the same token, we know the standard of player we're looking at now and if nothing else should be enthused by that.

Adieu for now - fingers crossed for a fine end to the T20 tonight!