So, the great 3D experience has hit cricket. And bounced straight back off.

Three other punters had made the trip to TWC’s local sports bar to watch England play Bangladesh in full 3D.

There wasn’t a great deal to impress them once they had paid their £3 for glasses that must cost all of 15p to produce – 3D has been well received in the cinemas but it is difficult to see it taking off as a pub staple.

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English cricket will learn in the next few weeks whether the new Government will back the proposal to return the Ashes to free-to-air television.

But the overwhelming probability is that David Davies’ recommendation, announced late last year in his review of sport’s ‘listed’ events, will be dropped, allowing the ECB to continue to sell their TV rights to the highest bidder.

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Matt Prior has always had to work harder than most. But thanks to Craig Kieswetter, the real work may only have just begun.

Cynics may dismiss that opening paragraph as a typical piece of journalistic mischief in an ongoing press-box game entitled: Right, Who Shall We Drop Next? But you only had to watch Prior’s first-Test performance against Bangladesh to realise that, even in chilly May, here was a player feeling the heat.

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So it’s Bangladesh again, but the beauty of a new Test series is that the individual subplots have moved on once more and can be reassesed. We delight in asking ourselves: how secure is each player’s place in the team and what challenges lie ahead for them? Here’s a run-through, based on a likely England XI on Thursday of: Strauss, Cook, Trott, Pietersen, Bell, Morgan, Prior, Bresnan, Swann, Anderson, Finn.

We start with Andrew Strauss. Poor Strauss. England winning the Twenty20 sparked some negative headlines and a spray of questions about the team’s absent captain: should he be in the one-day side? Would split captaincy undermine his authority? Is he now an outsider after missing the Bangladesh tour and the Twenty20 triumph? Should the Test captain have been rested in the first place? He hasn’t a hundred in 13 Championship innings this season, so it does not seem to have done him much good anyway, does it?

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If the cricket book world could be said to have an awards season, it has just closed with the announcement on Monday of the MCC/Cricket Society Book of the Year.

In March a panel representing the Cricket Writers’ Club judged the cricket book of the year as part of the British Sports Book of the Year awards.

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Extracting anything of significance from England’s two Tests against Bangladesh is like trying to tie down Tamim Iqbal. Tim Bresnan is the exception.

Bresnan’s emergence as an England player has less than inspired the media. Roli-poli sort of fella who bowls medium-fast; he’ll play a Test, a few one-dayers, and then disappear like a Wharf, a Kirtley or a Mustard. But, as Mike Atherton recently noted, Bresnan is one of those cricketers who it is easy to underestimate.

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After an Ashes year perhaps it shouldn’t have been a great surprise but cricket and cricket writing won big last night at the British Sports Journalism Awards. Of the 25 awards on offer, nine were won by cricket writers, broadcasters and photographers.

The big winner was Mike Atherton, who was named Columnist of the Year and also the ultimate accolade of Sports Writer of the Year. He was also highly commended in the Specialist Correspondent category which he won last year.

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With the start of the IPL just over a week away, it seemed to me a good time to start banging the drum about how it is a distant irrelevance, poorly reported (in this part of the world), broadcast only on pay-TV, contested by teams with no history and players furiously milking cricket’s new cash cow for all its worth.

But wait … In the wake of today’s announcement that ITV has picked up the rights to show the 2010 tournament, at least some of those criticisms have been rendered void. Is this finally the year to embrace Lalit Modi’s garish monster?

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Ruminating on Matt Prior’s vulnerability in light of the Craig Kieswetter meteor got me thinking about what might befall the make-up of the England Test team in the lead up to the Ashes this summer.

England, entrenched in the era of central contracts, are determined to mark their selection policy with consistency. A settled side is what they want when taking on Australia in just under nine months. But the Ashes also demands a tightening of selection. No more time for blooding a few players for the challenge ahead (as is happening in the Bangladesh series). This is the challenge ahead. Things can happen suddenly in these circumstances.

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Cricket’s schedule barely relents at all these days, so it’s a bit of luck that Afghanistan’s significant victory against Ireland has come at a time when the clutter has, albeit briefly, cleared.

For the Afghanistan story is one worth telling. In short, it is the result of the refugee phenomenon. Millions of Afghans fled their country following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1979 and the civil war that ensued. Estimated figures suggest around three million ended up in Pakistan’s refugee camps, where, amid tens of thousands, they caught the cricketing bug.

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