I managed to watch just a little of the Eng-SA series as the channel prefers to present teams from the Indian subcontinent.
Are you waching the under 19 series? It is presently on at
www.justin.tv. England is doing quite well. The cric future for Eng looks quite good.
No I haven't been able to catch any of the U-19s.
Great to hear we have some promising youngsters, but there's the usual problem with English cricket, most of them will be kept out of the county sides by sentimentality. Some of the counties keep the aging players, who are sliding towards retirement, in the teams far too long and delay the youngsters getting their debuts.
Most of them would probably be good enough to play by 20, but they get stuck behind the stalwarts of the county game for maybe another 5 years and by then some of that enthusiasm to play the game has been eroded.
A lot of players are still picked on past reputation and not current form. For decades the England Test Side has been proof of this.
Great example being Michael Carberry a fantastic batsman, who has scored brilliantly in the county game the past three seasons and was only called into the England squad against South Africa when Collingwood dislocated a finger in the 2nd Test. He is 29 and played for the U-19s in 2000 but still hasn't played a Test for England. He has only played 95 First Class County cricket games since his debut in 2002.
However with Andrew Strauss rested for the February/March 2010 tour to Bangladesh, it looks like Carberry will get his Test debut opening the batting with Alistair Cook, approx. seven months shy of his 30th birthday.
Good luck to him, I just hope the pitches in Bangladesh aren't nasty turning wickets that could make his first series difficult.
Carberry did say that his move to play County Cricket for Hampshire was a real turning point for his career in 2005, he got to play alongside the great Shane Warne (the county captain at the time) who helped him a lot.
:idea: Imagine adding Shane Warne to one of those great West Indian pace bowling attacks. No pitch would've been safe for any batsman.
