daveydave

Yeah I know, more cricket ramblings... So I've just listened to this interesting discussion on Twenty20 cricket and its possible impact on the future of the game. Twenty20 (or T20) was introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) back in 2003. Some nations (Australia in particular) scoffed, regarding it as some sort of playtime version of the game. They're taking it more seriously now. This form of the game has been hugely successful domestically , playing to sell-out crowds across England and Wales - unheard of for the counties . The inaugural World Twenty20 went down a storm in South Africa last year, and now the Indians have taken the lead. Firstly, the rebel Indian Cricket League (ICL) was set up promising big bucks to those who would brave international bans (ICL was not sanctioned by the International Cricket Council (ICC), cricket's governing body). Then the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the Indian equivalent of the ECB, set up its o...

...and other such sites. I know a lot of people (usually company execs) get a bit miffed at the YouTube thing - their precious content being screened for free - but in some cases if it wasn't for such websites, half of us would have no access at all. Here's the latest example which has really peed me off - any one noticed it's getting much easier to annoy me these days! :) If you've seen this blog before you'll probably have realised I'm a cricket fan. In the UK that means not getting to see much cricket on the telly because Sky has bagged all the rights - I have seen approximately 35 seconds of England cricket over the winter. So, I thought I'd sign up to ECBtv and pay for access to highlights. Nope, not allowed. I live in the UK, therefore I'm obviously not entitled to even pay to watch my own national team play. Make sense? No, not to me either. Surely I can't be the only person who thinks this way. I mean, organisations that seemingly go out of ...

New French President Nicolas Sarkozy has just spent 2 days on a State visit to the UK. He's a bit of a card isn't he, looking as nervous and uncomfortable as I would in such a glare of media and royalty, while his infinitely elegant wife looked on, calm as you like. But get him in front of a microphone and Monsieur Le Président comes into his own. Watching clips of his addresses to Parliament, at the banquet at Windsor Castle and at the Mansion House was like watching the nicest person you've ever met tell your mum all your best features. Beyond the flattery though, one thing does look reasonably hopeful, and that is he seems keen to improve relations with his neighbours over the channel and this can only be a good thing. He may seduce us with words of his deepest respect for the UK and its new-fangled ways, but there are a number of things we can learn from France: modern nuclear power for one, and bloody good trains for another. It was also nice to see the President call...

Heathrow Terminal 5 (or 'T5' if you're into that sort of thing) opened today in what was a very British display of disorganisation, cock-up and chaos. The £4.6bn (€5.9bn; $9.2bn) terminal had already seen hundreds of volunteers through the doors to test the systems and make sure everything was working as per spec. By close of play this evening however, only one of the 18 passenger lifts was working, over 30 flights had been cancelled and anyone wanting to fly tonight was going without their hold baggage. Beautiful. Heathrow operators BAA seem keen to open a third runways at this place too. I can't wait to see what sort of mess that'll turn out to be. I tell you what, why don't we stop trying to squeeze the entire population of the globe through that horrible shambles of an airport and have more direct flights to/from the regional airports. You know, have British Airways act as an actual national carrier, instead of a feeder airline for its Heathrow/Gatwick opera...