Crickets

Nothing political to blog about today - save the Lib Dem conference and the Met pissing all over the Official Secrets Act, obviously, but they'll both have been done to death elsewhere - so we'll have to make do with a few paragraphs about cricket.

First off, and I say this as a Yorkshire-born Geordie Londoner (you work it out), a massive well done to Lancashire for their tremendous victory in the County Championship, which is all the more remarkable because it was done without many household names. They don't have a star overseas player - unless you count Farveez Maharoof as a star overseas player, and while he's certainly a decent bowling all-rounder, I don't - and Jimmy Anderson's away with England all the time, so they've done it almost entirely with local youth. The trick is to have good young players that haven't yet been snaffled by the England set-up, and Lancashire have them in abundance. Simon Kerrigan, Karl Brown, Tom Smith and Luke Procter all fall into this category. Then there's Stephen Moore, Oliver Newby, Paul Horton and Mark Chilton - decent players who have been around a while without ever being considered for England - as well as Gary Keedy and the awesome Glen Chapple, two consummate players who are nearing the end of their careers without ever, discounting Chapple's single one-day international, being picked. Chapple in particular would have played 50 Tests in the mid-Nineties if Flower had been in charge. Let's not forget Saj Mahmood, either: Amir Khan's cousin might be out of the England picture now, but he's still fast and nasty and brutal when he wants to be with the bat.

The interesting thing, of course, is that Peter Moores is the Lancashire coach. After the slagging off he received from Kevin Pietersen and some others in the England camp, who's laughing now? Two Championship titles with two different counties isn't really a record to argue with.

Postscript: and what an enormous performance from Jonny Bairstow on England debut. For a 21-year-old who's been through more than most of us could ever have to confront, he done good.

(By the way, an addendum to yesterday's blog: It's now come out that the charges against Kweku Adoboli date back to 2008. So I've edited bits of yesterday's blog to make it sound less like utter bollocks.)