Bizarre

I'm not a huge fan of Jonathan Agnew; he's obviously a nice bloke, loves his cricket, but he's often a bit bland for my liking and sounds as though he's auditioning for a part as the new 'Johnners'. However, it was good to hear him coming down strongly against the selection of Darren Pattinson when I walked in this evening, as I agreed with every word. Where his critique really hit the nail on the head was in his focus on what the selection would say to the range of English bowlers who could, indeed should, have been picked ahead of him.

It was a bizarre decision on a number of levels. Consider this:

a. To all intents and purposes he's Australian.

b. Before today he'd played in eleven first class matches and is almost thirty years old.

c. He'd only ever bowled at Headingley once. In a Twenty20 game.

d. His captain had only seen him bowl once. In a Twenty20 game.

e. Regardless of his ability - and the stats speak of a decent bowler with some promise although probably a bit old to ever fulfil it - it was asking a huge amount for him to take his place in a side in which he'd never met or even played against most of his team-mates, on a ground he didn't know, and produce his best form.

A penny for the thoughts tonight of Steve Harmison, Matthew Hoggard, Simon Jones and Chris Tremlett.

Worcester Reflections

For me, May ended and June began at the one and only Worcester, where the home county beat Essex in a relatively low-scoring LV Division Two game on a track which, although it settled down a bit in the Saturday sunshine, always gave the bowlers plenty of assistance. Few batsmen from either side coped well with it; the exceptions being Worcestershire's young local opener Daryl Mitchell, the evergreen and always under-rated Ben Smith, whose double of 60 and 71 went a long way towards securing Worcestershire's victory and Ravi Bopara, whose gritty and patient second innings 85 - the innings of a potential Test player - made sure that Essex went down with a fight.

For the bowlers it was largely a matter of getting the ball in the right place and letting the pitch do the rest, especially at the Diglis End, but, while Steve Magoffin was desperately unlucky on the final day and Kabir Ali also bowled well, the stand-out seamer was Simon Jones, who bowled with pace, accuracy and desire to take eight in the game. Bowling like this there's no doubt he'd be an asset to England (and he clearly thinks so too), but he only bowled 18 complete overs and he'll need to adjust to a heavier workload before he's really ready. The signs, though, are very, very good.

Lastly a word about a young cricketer who I talked up a lot two years ago but who's been forgotten amid the attention lavished on Prior and Ambrose since. This may be no bad thing, as Steven Davies needs time and space to develop away from the limelight but, to me, everything he does, both with keeping and batting gloves on, carries an unmistakeable air of class and assurance, even if he isn't cashing in.

I still think he's an England player of the future and, rising 22, he has time on his side.

The Jones Boy

After last year's debacle, I'm going up to Worcester for a few days next weekend to see Worcestershire's championship match against Essex. I'm looking forward to seeing Ravi Bopara but the most enticing prospect is that of watching Simon Jones bowl.

It seems he's really starting to get it together again, and I thought his interview with Simon Wilde in yesterday's Sunday Times was impressively mature, percipient and encouraging.

I'll report back.

Nine And A Half Weeks

I haven't been around much over the last couple of weeks - work and rugby trips to Gloucester, Cornwall and up the sunlit Exe Valley to Tiverton have seen to that. Having dissected Gloucester's Heineken Cup defeat against Agen over a post-match beer at Kingsholm with my Welsh mate Alan, our thoughts turned to the Ashes series. We were both fairly pessimistic (this was before we'd heard that England had managed to beat the West Indies in the dreaded Champions Trophy but somehow I don't think that knowledge would have altered our views all that much) and the eventual consensus of the ideas, issues and theories which we tried to get our heads round as the wind picked up and the gloom descended was that England could win the series and retain the Ashes, but that it would depend on various pieces of a large and currently very messy jigsaw falling into place.

Where does the average England fan's mind go to when thinking about the Ashes? Unless you're trying very hard it goes straight back to the late summer of 2005, that's where. And the single most important factor in England's win was the outstanding form of Andrew Flintoff. Sure, there were valuable contributions at one stage or another from a wide range of players, some of whom weren't even on the plane which has just landed in Australia (Michael Vaughan, Simon Jones), but Flintoff, with his prodigious ability and guileless charisma, was always at the heart of things.

Which is why, as Brisbane beckons, England need, more than anything else, Flintoff to prove his fitness to bowl long and penetrative spells and produce innings that feature the type of boisterous power which is second nature to him, while also displaying a degree of rationality in shot selection which has often seemed entirely foreign.

In India the signs weren't hopeful. He didn't bowl much and made few runs, looking for all the world like someone who hadn't played properly for several months (which he was). And now he has just two warm-up matches in which to rediscover some semblance of the form which made him everyone's favourite cricketer just over a year ago.

Of course, other players also need to 'step up to the plate' (as Duncan Fletcher might say). Harmison needs to quickly re-discover the reverberating hostility and pace which made him the world's leading bowler in 2004, England's batting tyros, Ian Bell (the new - and very welcome - ICC Emerging Player of the Year) and Alastair Cook, need to find their feet immediately against Warne and the rest, Marcus has to start batting as we know he can at the top of the order, Monty has to drop it on his usual length and find his usual turn and whichever wicket-keeper survives the selection process (and I'm convinced it will again be Jones) has to hold everything and make some runs as well.

If most of this happens then England will have a decent chance of retaining the urn, even against an Australian team with home advantage and which will be more strongly motivated than ever before.
If some or none of it happens England are in trouble. The signs aren't great, and my current feeling is that England are going to be in trouble.

As somebody once said, though, 'a week is a long time in politics'. The only problem here is that we're talking about cricket, but experience has taught me that nine and a half weeks (as somebody once called a film) is a long time in cricket.

See you at the SCG in early January. It's going to be an interesting ride.

Central Contracts

There were some obvious decisions among the new round of England central contracts announced today - deals for Cook and Panesar for starters - but also some wishful ones - Simon Jones and Michael Vaughan - and a downright odd and potentially counter-productive one, which is covered very well by Tim de Lisle here.

As I've said all along, despite Read's generally excellent keeping and batting in the last two Tests against Pakistan, and the fact that Geraint Jones has made very few runs since he's been back at Kent, don't be surprised if Jones lines up in Brisbane. He will always be Fletcher's favourite and I can't see him being properly removed from the scene until Steven Davies can't be held back any longer.