“Technically speaking, a player doesn’t have to be registered with a county to be eligible for England. But, practically, it’s in the best interest of the player and the England management that he is registered with a county” – so the spectre of Freelance Kev may be some way off yet, if the ECB has any say about it.
“Australia will surely be combing the land for a left-arm-spinner” – Andy Bull points to the glaringly obvious attack point for England’s current batting line-up.
“I was speaking to Paul Collingwood and we’d have liked to have had our bowlers here learning. A lot of our players should definitely have put their names in the hat” – KP on why even more key England players should be risking burn-out, injury and long lay-offs in the IPL. No, hang on, that’s not right…
“He was always going to come back into form sooner rather than later. He is an absolute class player and is our best player by a distance” – KP gets a thumbs-up from the Skipper.
“You’ve got to sort your technique out and make sure you use your bat as the first line of defence” – Kevin Pietersen is going back to basics to sort out his problems with LBW calls and left-arm spinners.
With the kind permission of our readers, we’d like to take a bit of a liberty and mention Kevin Pietersen.
“Eoin Morgan and Kevin Pietersen shared England’s best-ever stand in Twenty20 cricket to down world champions Pakistan by seven wickets in Dubai” – the perfect start to the weekend.
“The decision about whether to play in the IPL, which starts in Mumbai on March 12, will rest with individual players” – England’s eight IPL players will be using a report from the Professional Cricketers’ Association due early next week to gauge whether they face insurmountable security risks.
“[Sunday's play] ended a dreadful series for Pietersen – though Strauss, Jonathan Trott and Matt Prior have fared equally poorly with the bat” – BBC match report. Hmmm. And what do those four have in common?
The Nurdler was rather amused to see a website full of spoofs of Conservative leader David Cameron’s recent airbrushed advertising billboard – and even more interested to see there was a downloadable template so we could make our own. So here it is.