So long Monty and Harmy. You’ve been a bit rubbish for England this year and you’ve missed out on a central contract. Fair enough – international cricket’s a tough game, you let your form then your place slip and you find yourself plummeting.

And that is precisely why Collingwood, Bell and Cook have all been given central contracts for the next 12 months. Eh?

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I don’t particularly like Lord’s as a sporting venue. There are others out there, too. We may be a minority but we suffer the kind of opinion-discrimination normally reserved for those (weirdos) who hate The Beatles.

The stuffiest Test venue in the world has been awarded three Test matches next summer – England v Pakistan, England v Bangladesh and Pakistan v Australia. A tad excessive, maybe?

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If there’s one type of cricket article that we hate, it’s the ‘what about this potential England wicketkeeper?’ one. There are too many mediocre candidates and all that happens is that the picture gets murkier.  Nevertheless: we miss Phil Mustard.

In one way it’s perhaps for the best that joint dismissals with his Durham team mate Graham Onions aren’t being brought to international cricket headlines, but all the same, he has a zestiness (or is Mustard always fiery?) about his cricket which is conspicuously absent from England’s one-day side.

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