h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The draw is about to take place for this season's Twenty20 Cup. The usual points scoring rules apply, though this is a knockout competition. The highest scoring team goes through to the next round, and if the scores between two teams are tied, the highest individual score will be taken from each team until one has more points than the other. If there is still a tie, the Board's decision will be final.

Matches will take place as follows:

First round: Matches played on Friday 22nd June
Quarter Finals: 29th June
Semi Finals: 6th July
Final: 17/18th July (the Twenty20 quarter final days)

The Board appreciates that having the Finals on a day when only eight teams are in action is not an ideal state of affairs, but thanks to scheduling by the inconsiderate ECB plus hefty personal commitments, there appears to be no way around it. If your players are any good, they'll have got through to that stage anyway.

Prize money is a very generous £100,000 for the winner, and £50,000 for the runner up.

The draw is taking place very shortly, and will be on the league tables page at A21363392. Good luck!

Any chance we could drop our spinner for the 20-20 competition only?

B

I'm afraid not. In any case, slower bowlers tend to do better in terms of wickets in Twenty20, don't they?

I have a feeling Rashid will be back to his best soon, anyway. He's incredibly talented for such a young player. Form is temporary, class is permanent, as they say.

It does seem to be a tournament where the ebst bowlers are spinenrs or medium-pace dibbly-dobbly merchants (see the grestest 20/20 player to date, former England captain Adam Hollioake)

I take it nothing came of his Essex comeback, then? It sounded like it was almost a done deal, but there has been nothing in the news about it for ages.

I grant you that Rashid is a good player, but I do wish that Yorkshire wouldn't declare when he's on 49.

B

That is rude, isn't it? I know it's only a stat, but for the sake of a swing for one run you'd think they'd wait a couple of minutes before calling them in.

They did let him have one ball after tea. Clearly they hadn't told him they'd be declaring straight afterwards.

B

One ball? Hardly seems worth the walk out to the crease. I presume that one over served a grand purpose in Yorkshire's game plan.

Well, it was one over, but Timmy Bresnan faced the other five.

B

Why declare after one over of a session, though?

Because Darren Gough's not very good at captaincy?

Can I have the points for Rashid's 50 in light of bad man-management, then?

B

back to Hollioake:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/counties/essex/6766721.stm

Bloody ridiculous. I'm almost tempted to give you some of Gough's points, but that would probably just annoy someone else.

So Hollioake did sign, then. Maybe he only remembered because we were talking about it.

Judging by today's papers my overseas player was just playing 'bowl the quickest over of the season', as well.

Now, I appreciate that Yorkshire are top, but I do feel hard done by.

B

On the subject of quick overs:

Yesterday, in a match with no prospect of a result and with Worcestershire facing a points deduction for slow over rate over the course of the match, we opened the bowling with Vikram Solanki (top order batsman, part time off-spinner) and Gareth Batty (all-rouinder, off-spiner), and they rattled through 18 overs in under 45 minutes to get the reate respectable, and then brought medium-pacer Nadem Malik on for Solanki, as Ali, Hog or Bollinger would have bowled to slow and got the rate down again.

Apparently, one Younus Khan, bowling off a novel one-pace run-up, bowled an over in 35 seconds. Beat that.

B

'It was a bit of a farcical way to finish,' he (Anthony McGrath) said.

Yes, I think that's fair.

Steve Rhodes of Worcestershire wasn't quite so convincing:

'...we didn't do it just for the sake of the over rate. Openers don't like facing spin on the fourth day and there was a bit of rough there, so we thought of it as an attacking option as well.'

Hmm. Solanki as an attacking bowling option? I look forward to seeing how many more times they try that tactic on day four when the result isn't at stake.