Another fine mess for the ECB - View from the Lumley End

2:31pm Friday 18th July 2008

GLAMORGAN it is then.

That sentence is written with an audible sigh as the ECB manage to rescue approximately none of their dignity from the Twenty20 farce.

After all the to-ing and fro-ing and the painfully slow process that went into making the decision, one rather suspects that brewers should not be wary if losing too much stock should the cricketing authorities feel the need to organise an end of season party at their place of work.

The distinct lack of consideration shown to this most northerly county in organising the potential means of qualification for a finals day at a ground so far away it may as well be in France, shall live long in the memory.

At least the BBC and Sky have had the good grace to release Shaun Pollock from commentary duties to take part in the rearranged fixture on Tuesday, although anyone who has heard his recent TMS commentaries may well be fearful that his love of the traditional cakes on offer to Aggers and co may well have slowed him down somewhat.

But as a county, we must move on for fear of sounding like an old soak at the bar, relentlessly and drunkenly regaling the barman with tales of love lost.

With the departure of Albie Morkel, who showed glimpses of why he's been part of Twenty20 winning sides both in South Africa and in the IPL, perhaps most memorably away at Lancashire where he excelled in front of the Sky cameras, we welcome back Shiv Chanderpaul, arguably the most talented batsman ever to play for Durham.

Chanderpaul's influence will be vital over the next couple of months if Durham are to have any chance of rescuing their faltering County Championship challenge.

The seemingly age-old problem of middle order fragility has reared its ugly head once more, with the selection of five bowlers and the hope that Wiseman, Plunkett and Ben Harmison would somehow cobble together enough runs to win the match smacking of indecision and a lack of faith in any of the other batsmen at the club.

In the end Plunkett's knock was vital, but with the honourable exceptions of Di Venuto and the irrepressible Benkenstein, nobody has scored runs with any kind of consistency.

There also seemed to be an unwillingness to drop one of the seamers, although Cook eventually tackled this problem by dropping Graham Onions for the Surrey game after he had seemed out-of-sorts and short of fitness against Somerset.

The number three slot remains a poisoned chalice, with Will Smith looking increasingly luckless, although one suspects not under too much pressure from the likes of Muchall or Coetzer.

The limpet-like Chanderpaul should make a huge difference and the most needs to be made of his presence before his departure prior to the end of the season.

Poor old Pro 40, now consigned to the annals of history like the Anglo-Italian Cup and replaced by the EPL and Twenty20 league which appears on the back of the ECB eying up a slice of particularly rich money cake.

How a June of the world's great stars descending on county stars fits in with a traditional Summer of Test cricket remains to be seen, but the initial worry has to be that the authorities eyes may well have been bigger than their belly.

The specifics clearly need to be addressed, but from here it looks to be an exciting move, one which will only get less exciting when somebody, somewhere, gets the lawyers involved.

Pro40 is a baffling curio, a competition which seems to serve no real purpose in preparation for international cricket and whose main justification seems to be that it allows fans a greater lie-in.

However, it would be churlish to criticise a competition that Durham could potentially win.

Fickle I know, but the time for dismissing such randomness on the part of the ECB comes when, like a small child who didn't want to play anyway, our chances of winning have disappeared.

Eating Out