Trinidad and Tobago captain Daren Ganga has led his team brilliantly in the Champions League so far. Last night, the team pulled off an astonishing win as Kieron Pollard made 54 not out from 18 balls when the West Indians looked buried. Afterwards, Ganga talked Stanford, Twenty20 and West Indies …

Could you give the full West Indies side a game – could you be a national side on your own?
We have played them in the past. But we are not thinking of taking on the West Indies. West Indies cricket is so much more valuable to all the West Indies people. It is the only thing in the Caribbean that unifies. The Champions League can be seen as a positive so that West Indies cricket in the end benefits. We have all seen the results of Sir Allen Stanford and his investment in the Caribbean and in young cricketers. What we are doing here will go and inspire so that West Indies cricket can be improved and enhanced.

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Marcus Trescothick’s sad departure to England has created a mixture of confusion and bewilderment from many Indians – and his county have exacerbated a desperate situation.

The news broke late last night here. It is not a massive story for the locals but is of interest – they would like to know why one of the English teams’ most high profile players has headed home. And as the rumours leaked out, Somerset’s communication broke down.

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Nine months in the life of Younis Khan:

January 2009: made captain of Pakistan, a team short of cricket-playing options because of the perceived security threat in the country. He returns to Test cricket with a triple hundred against Sri Lanka at Karachi and is briefly the number-one ranked Test player in the world Read the rest of this entry »

The Champions League Twenty20 began with defeats for each of the IPL sides in their respective opening fixtures. Champagne corks have been unaffected, but we have to admit that we’re pretty pleased.

It’s not that we’ve got a problem with Delhi, Bangalore or Hyderabad. It’s more that we’ve got a problem with GMR Group, United Breweries Group and Deccan Chargers Sporting Ventures. Yes, cricket clubs are businesses – non-profitable ones if they’re English counties – but the IPL sides are businesses first and sports clubs second.

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Oli Broom is cycling to the 2010-11 Ashes, and he’s on his way. Please go to the bottom of the page and donate to one of his chosen charities.

The past few months have been so full of research and organisational errands, that I have barely had time to consider what I have just set out to do. Last Saturday’s departure date crept up on me to such an extent that at 11pm the night before I had not practised packing, had never ridden the bike “fully loaded”, and I had less than 100 songs on my ipod … that’s one song to listen to every four days.

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Decide to go for a wander around Delhi – Connaught Place is the tourist shopping centre – a layout of confusing and massive circular roads, stuffed full with shops, people, markets and offices. There’s also a beautiful park in the centre.

I am not sure what it is but people spot me as a visitor – I even put on a sunhat to cover the ginger hair and hid my camera in my rucksack – but they still come up offering help.

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By Jack Pilkington, Yorkshire County Cricket Club Bursar (i.e. Him as is in charge of brass)

Fifteen years hard work as a fast bowler for Yorkshire, says Matthew Hoggard. Don’t talk to me about hard work, lad. When I were your age I toiled down the pit for 27 hours a day, then ran over to Scarborough in the freezing rain to bowl 45 overs into a gale, then went in as nightwatchman in the pitch black and had to face Wes Hall with nothing but a Garibaldi to protect meself and when I got back in the dressing room Brian Close would beat us within an inch of my life and then and only then was I allowed to start on the double-entry book-keeping and other vital financial matters as kept Yorkshire County Cricket Club as the most prudently run cricket club in the whole world.

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For a while I’ve had serious doubts about the balance of this England team without Andrew Flintoff. Before I could put them to paper, Shane Warne beat me to it this morning.

Warney was in typically uncompromising form as he laid into England’s plans to bat Stuart Broad at No.7 against South Africa this winter. Broad is, for Warne, “a decent bowler and a reasonable batsman, just not an international allrounder”. Often caricatured as a provocative Aussie in his Times column, Warne is as adept at pinpointing English weakness in print as he was from 22 yards.

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As Mike Yardy and Ed Joyce were rebuilding Sussex’s innings in their second match of the Champions League at Delhi – pushing, nurdling, shoving like the workman they needed to be, it was very easy for the mind and the eye to wander to the cheerleaders who decorate the ground and inspire the crowd.

It is the usual cheerleading stuff – pom-pom waving, legs kicking, hips waggling and shaking – and everyone loves it. They leap onto their podiums at any opportunity: wicket, run, between overs, as the batsman is re-marking his guard and keep everyone alive and moving.

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At some point, you’d like to think people will listen. Yesterday on this site, the Sussex coach Mark Robinson voiced the concerns of most of his peers about the volume of county cricket. In this month’s Wisden Cricketer, Sean Morris, of the Professional Cricketers’ Association, urged a less-is-more attitude.

And in the London Evening Standard yesterday Andrew Strauss was saying exactly the same thing. In fact he went further, saying that we need overseas players because otherwise county cricket – with 18 teams – wouldn’t be strong enough and that actually fewer counties would be a good idea. Of course his diplomatic cop-out was “we have to work with what we’ve got”.

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