[Lord Snooty]

Everton Weekes. Out for 95.

RIP

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Only man ever to make centuries in five consecutive Test innings! RIP Sir Everton.

On a side note, that's a proper West Indian cricketer name, isn't it? Forget your John Campbells and your Chris Gayles; the glory days aren't coming back until you've got Morecambe Reagan, Douglas Dacres and Wellington Bates steaming in from the Pavilion End...

[themaclad]

Recreational cricket can start next week

[themaclad]

Almost time

[themaclad]

Season to start 3/8/2020 3 groups of 6 to play regional 4 day game final at Lords in September
20/20 starts September all teams play 10 games

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Cricket South Africa have unveiled another new format of cricket, which is three team cricket.

And I thought the 100 was going to be bad

If anyone wants something to scratch their head over on this fine Saturday morning, the three-team Solidarity Cup is live now on BBC Sport: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/cricket/53433563

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AB de Villiers there, looking like a man who's just declared jihad on Primark.

[spireitematt]

I watched highlights on Youtube of the 3 side cricket, It's so odd and doesn't make much sense. They should have had 2 teams with 8 players on each, 10 overs, 2 innings.

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

It's the commentator/presenter and former Hants captain Mark Nicholas who invented the format, and he explained that it's aimed at encouraging kids to play in schools, as you can potentially get a larger number of players involved than the usual 22. That said, Pommie Mbangwa pointed out the obvious flaw in the set-up: if you've got a strong bowling attack but a weak batting line-up, you're going to end up effectively "winning" the match for one of the other teams. And that's before you even get onto the complications of a league system, in which a team who are badly losing a game could decide which of the other two teams they'd prefer to win, and just bowl absolute pies at them.

Maybe as a one-off thing for kids it might have its uses, though I'm not convinced the wheel needs to be re-invented on that front. Just get some decent equipment and outreach into state schools, teach the rules of the sport at a young age and then let the rest sort itself out.

[themaclad]

Read a piece this morning about cricket starting to take off in Germany mainly down to Afghan immigrants however there is a book written by Sid Waddell's son called the Field of Dreams about German criket before and during the Second World War

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Thanks to YouTube there's also a growing number of Americans taking an interest. There's a couple of baseball fans who converted to the faith a few months ago, set up a channel called Cricket For Americans and they're currently getting up at 3am every day to do a livestream watch of the England vs Windies Tests. You have to respect their commitment, and they've grown quite knowledgeable about the game in a fairly short space of time.