Dangerous State of Mind

England have been losing one-day matches of varying shades, to varying opponents, for almost as long as I've been alive.

There are always a range of causes (or excuses) for this - too much cricket, too little cricket, too much exposure to the wrong sort of cricket, too little to the right sort, poor technique, lack of application, too much confidence, too little confidence.

One unwelcome characteristic which the typical English professional cricketer has always seemed to me to have in bucketloads is the ability to look down on people who they don't consider to be as good as them; people who play 'club' or even worse, 'village' cricket. Amateurs. Like the Dutch.

True to form I think England took the Dutch lightly on Friday, with their clumsy team selection giving the game away. Why on earth have Robert Key (and an out-of form Robert Key at that), a specialist opener in all forms of the game, batting at six when what was needed down the order was someone who could blast the ball out of the park, such as Dimi Mascarenhas (whom I would favour as he's done it before at international level) or Graham Napier? And why was Rashid playing? He's not a regular in his county's Twenty20 side and I'm sure that in the long term his best forms of the game are likely to prove to be the longer ones.

The answers lie in the fact that England were - perhaps only subconsciously, but that doesn't alter the argument - treating their game against Holland as another warm-up match, a sideshow and a prelude to the matches that really mattered.

It's a dangerous state of mind to get into as it can sap the will to win and affect players' techniques and decision-making, and England, of all one-day teams, ought to be immune to it

Now, if they don't win today, there won't be any more matches.

The Long Road Back

The omissions and inclusions in the latest list of centrally-contracted England players were predictable, but I was heartened and pleased by the return to the ODI side of Graeme Swann, who hasn't had so much as a sniff of a place in the squad since he went to South Africa around the turn of the millennium and was thought to have upset Duncan Fletcher with his insouciant attitude.

At age-group level in England Swann was one of the more talented players of his generation and a member, alongside Owais Shah and Robert Key (and a few other county journeymen like Stephen Peters) of the side which won the under-19 World Cup in early 1998. Later that year he made a sparkling start to his career with Northants -I particularly remember innings of 92 and 111 from number eight in a losing cause at Leicester - and, when he was called up to the England side at the end of the decade, his future looked assured. Somehow, though, it never really happened. The years since have seen him falter at Northampton, move to Nottingham, struggle to make a consistent impression in the first-class game but develop into a dangerous operator in limited-overs cricket with both bat and ball, and retain the enthusiasm and humour which made him stand out back then.

He's another example of the type of player - like Ryan Sidebottom - who would never have found a way back into 'Team England' under Fletcher's dogmatic stewardship, and the resurrection of players like this is as good a retrospective argument for Fletcher's replacement with Peter Moores as I've found. And it was instructive to hear Swann himself say last night that Sidebottom's recall and the success that followed it was one of the main things which gave him hope that he too could find a way back.

And now, with the England ODI side finally looking like it could be moving in the right direction, is a pretty good time to return. With Panesar's continuing inability to reproduce his Test form and Swann's batting and fielding potential, a longer-term place in the side could be well within reach of a player who seems to have been around for a very long time but is only 28.

I hope he makes it.

Great Things

Yesterday's trip to the small east Devon seaside town of Budleigh Salterton for the trans-Tamar Minor Counties clash between Devon and Cornwall (pictured) was the ideal way to come down after the considerable and lengthy excitement of Saturday's Twenty20 finals day.

I've written before about how much I enjoy the truncated form of the game and Saturday's three matches were no exception. Before the day pretty well everybody would have expected Lancashire and Sussex to contest the final. Instead, thanks to some magnificent batting by Craig Spearman, Robert Key and Joe Denly among others, supported by terrific fielding, it was Kent and Gloucestershire who did so, with Kent coming out on top as a result of some great death batting from Darren Stevens, a player of some class who's never quite done justice to his ability, and a hat-trick from the young South African all-rounder Ryan McLaren.

After the group stages were largely ruined by the June monsoon the final three games and Edgbaston's pulsating atmosphere were a timely reminder of why this competition is the most important thing to have hit the English county game since the 1960s.

On Sunday I had the pleasure of watching a measured and classy knock of 93 from a tall Cornish 17 year-old called Matt Robins. I've got no idea whether he'll make it or not but there must be plenty of people playing county cricket who weren't as good as him at the same age.

If he goes on to great things you read it here first.