Somerset sign Jayasuriya

Somerset have signed Sri Lankan Sanath Jayasuriya as their overseas player for the time when Graeme Smith won't take over as captain. This is interesting news, although a bit of a shame we won't see them play together - now that would be some opening partnership!!

He'll be there until the end of May, when Smith will arrive and take over the reins as captain.

That's an understatement! You've been pathetic as of late especially with the so called exceptional players you have. But that's half your problem to co-insisde with the expectation issue. You expect too much because you think that because you have big name players like Flintoff and Mal Loye and Carl Hooper and Dominic Cork and co that you will do well. But just because they happen to be big name players doesn't mean that their record is actually any good. They may have international experience and what have you but at the end of the day you're not even in the top division anymore. You guys need to take you're damn heads out of the clouds and start training and working hard just like other teams who think they live on the planet Earth unlike you lot who think you're superhuman, just like Surrey actually who are another lot who think that they're fulled with individual stars and its nothing to do with me being a middlesex fan and being a part of the MCC. They too find themselves getting their arrogant behinds in lower divisional cricket. Get it together for god's sake and stop thinking you're above the rest of the cricketing world because you have a team fulled with "has beens" who are probably gonna find their next job in reality television dawning soon.

Don't try and blame it on the system, most of your players are not centrally contracted! They're all a bunch of "has beens" like i said who aren't good enough anymore which is why they play for you. The system is screwed up like i've said before (remember the posts in the twenty20 topic) but it doesn't actually affect you.

Originally posted by Inducker Maybe we should get Athers out of his bathchair and out in the middle again !!

See what i mean! Has Beens! Fulled with players past their sell by date who have given everything else up but still play for Lancashire!

Originally posted by Inducker There must be summat in the water around Middlesex - they are a REALLY , REALLY cantankerous load of buggers aren't they!!!

Watch it! There's nothing wrong with the water in thames i'll have you know! I've been urinating in for years and its never done me any harm!!

Originally posted by Inducker Freddy is far and away the most popular cricketer in the whole of England !!! In fact get rid of Blair and put him in Number 10 !!!

No! We must have Boris Johnson at number 10! He's more loveable and adorable and he's a better cricketer!

Its a shame that Gough in now VC of Essex and now still with your archest of rivals, i'd like to see him pull the trigger on your sorry ass's.

Shame you're both lower division now actually or the battle and war of the roses may actually have some value again!

Boris is great! He's alegend! So what if his name deffefelle or whatever. He's be great at number 10. He'd be the most popular loveable PM seen since well has the UK ever had a likeable person in charge before Blair?

Yeah i know what i meant to say was that its a shame that Gough isn't VC of Yorkshire and with Yorkshire anymore as they are your archest rivals, well you're both big lower league rivals anyhow.

And yes i (like Jose Canseco) am indeed juiced, its because i want to look like the Incredible Hulk and join Lancashire to play County Cricket.

Let's get this back on topic else it'll be closing time.

Shane Warne has committed himself to four more years of County cricket with Hampshire, which will be a huge boost for the South Coast County. Rod Bransgrove, chairman seems to think so:

"This is fantastic news, he will be a major influence in establishing Hampshire as one of cricket's main teams."

Certainly optimisitic, but fantastic news for them nonetheless, Warne has taken 121 wickets for them at 23.56

Just read that and thought "who, Warne or the Hampshire chairman??"

Sri Lanka also have decided to complete the tour of NZ now so it looks as if Sanath and co may be out for the entire first part of the first class season. Somerset did want to re-sign Ponting but were refused permission by the ECB as he is the Australian Captain and no Australian Captain or Vice Captain is now allowed to play County Cricket in England in an Ashes year in a secret directive signed last year by David Morgan. I shouldn't really have said that on a public forum but i don't really care to be honest. It was signed after Mark and Steven Waugh both played County Cricket just a couple of months before an Ashes Series and were accussed by some in the England camp (like then coach David Lloyd) of spying. I think accusations of espionage might be a bit farfetched...but yeah anyway looks like you'll now be looking for someone new JP.

Hosting a match in England in October is like hosting a match any other time of the year, its horribly wet and miserable where as in India in April and May temperatures top 40c and the reason you can't play is due to heat exhaustion.

The whole Sri Lankan situation is a mess and even though it may be good for some not neccessarily so for India who have no scheduled fixtures for the rest of this year! Also Sri Lanka don't have anything scheduled for a while either.

I think the game is a little dense at the moment but it should disperse out again this year. England and Australia have 3 months to themselves and then a bit series and then England have practically the rest of the year to themselves barring a couple of Tests with Bangladesh. Pakistan onlyhave one more series at most after this tour of India is up and NZ have finished their work for the next few months too after this series with Sri Lanka ends. The one nation that has had a very tough long grueling schedule is South Africa with 5 Tests against England followed by 7 One Day matches and 3 with Zimbabwe and then 2 Tests against them followed by this series with the West Indies. The West Indies themselves are actually looking for more cricket and are trying to organise a series with India that is really going nowhere. So things are not too bad but from now on in you have to factor in the Super Series tournaments so all the relevance may have been for nothing.

What's the 40 hours down a mine got to do with anything?

I think a load of those players would probably play as hard as they can before the Australia series starts and hope they get injured and have to miss the tour!