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

Below is an extract from his latest blog. You can read the full posts on www.cyclingtotheashes.com.

I spent a fantastic weekend in Passau, which sits at the confluence of three rivers – the Ilz, the Inn and the Danube. Tali and Jojo, two friends from Berlin, drove down to meet me, and another friend, James Gilmour, has also flown out from London to cycle with me for two weeks - nice then, for him, that the weather has just turned miserable, and the news from Vienna is that snow is on the ground.

At 6am on Monday morning James and I jumped on the train back to where I had left off on Friday afternoon. At the end of the day we may as well have swum the Danube, we were that wet. Another long day into Passau today was less wet, but tomorrow apparently the rain is back. I never thought I would welcome the arrival of snow on this trip, but I can’t wait for it. It’ll be easier to keep out than rain.

In about an hour I am meeting the President of the German Cricket Board, Brian Fell, for dinner in Passau. It will be great to meet him, especially after introducing some of the locals to the sport with a game on some turf we found at the University campus. To give you a taste, highlights included ringing endorsements from locals for the Mongoose, head protection in the form of a German miltary helmet and the most powerful cricket shot ever hit by a non-international cricketer – the ball ended up lodged between my upper and lower jaw. Miraculously I escaped uninjured.

You can follow Oli Broom‘s journey to Brisbane on thewisdencricketer.com, or at www.cyclingtotheashes.com, or on twitter at http://twitter.com/cyclingtoashes. Oli is aiming to raise £50,000 each for the Lord’s Taverners and the British Neurological Research Fund (BNRT). Click to donate.

The Wisden Cricketer needs you! Especially if you’re a self-confessed nerd. Geekier the better really.

I’m putting together a feature on cricket memorabilia and want to hear from people with their own private collections – it could be anything from autographs to Martin McCague’s handkerchiefs. It would involve interviewing you and quite possibly poking around your stash. No guarantees that everyone will make the final cut, but if you do you’ll get a nice picture and your story in our pages.

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A growing number of ex-players, journalists and fans are becoming increasingly concerned that there are now too many articles being written about there being too much international cricket.

One England player, who asked to remain anonymous, put the case in bleak terms.

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So Ireland are seeking Full Member status within the ICC, which is slightly like Danny Dyer applying to join MI5.

Ireland’s struggles to keep hold of their best players are well-documented. Currently the strongest Associate Member by a distance, they are entitled to temporary ODI status but denied the chance to play Test cricket. Applying to join the 10 Full Members is a long, tricky and intensely political process but it could take them there. What would await them in terms of evenly-matched competition is another matter.

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The County Championship points system will be reviewed for next season, the ECB has announced.

About time. Obviously this could just be an excuse for a working group to meet up at Starbucks for a natter and nothing will get changed but it is at least an acknowledgment by the board that there could be a better way of allocating points. As it stands, a team receives 14 points for a win, four points for draw and up to eight bonus points from their first-innings performances. Read the rest of this entry »

“We’ve got a chap called Tyson,” said Len Hutton shortly after England arrived in Australia to defend the Ashes in 1954-55. “But you won’t have heard of him because he’s hardly ever played.”

Forgive the nostalgia, but Hutton’s piece of professional Yorkshireness came to mind last week as the runners and riders for the now-vacant New Zealand coaching job were discussed. Out went Andy Moles (the only English coach on the international circuit) and in came, well, who exactly? John Dyson? John Wright? Duncan Fletcher?

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The ICC was hoping the Champions Trophy would come to the rescue of its troubled 50-over format, but they should look instead to the current one-day series being played in India. Australia and India are tied 2-2 in their seven-match series and the cricket has been absorbing.

At its best, one-day cricket offers a middle way between Tests and Twenty20s; there is enough time for ebb and flow and yet this is balanced by the tick-tocking of time pressure. There is a rich variety of pace to the cricket: runs dry up completely, they arrive in a torrent, and in between times they can be sought only from a trickling stream of opportunity.

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England’s women get their tour of the West Indies underway tomorrow as holders of the World Cup, the World Twenty20 and the Ashes.

It is a position of strength that has allowed them to arrive in St. Kitts without two of their best players – Wisden Cricketer of the Year Claire Taylor, who has stayed at home to work on her career as a management consultant at Reading University, and Sarah Taylor, who is being rested and will undergo “a focused period of physical regeneration and conditioning over the next two months”.

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The cricket media and the fans seem to think there is too much cricket.  There is. Luke Wright said it right here and he doesn’t even play Test cricket.

That might be the key. There may be too much cricket in general, but the form of the game that has managed to reach into three separate centuries certainly doesn’t get over-played.

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