It's been another serious week for cricket and a very busy one for the lawyers on the books of county clubs. As always, what one legal brain believes to be the truth another will dispute, and it won't be stopping here.
The set out on Wednesday its tough stance on the emerging Indian Twenty20 leagues.
A complex issue has everyone running around asking what if? There is so much uncertainty.
Whilst most attention has focused on what England's top players might do in the future, chief executives and coaches of the county teams have been trying to get to grips with who will and won't be available for them this season.
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Watching England's warm-up match at the quiet and picturesque University Oval in seems a million miles away from the storm which seems to be brewing in the world game.
Today's editorial in the local newspaper the makes very interesting reading. The headline is "Hit for six" and it is a strongly worded warning about what it describes are the dangers of the .
The editorial starts "New Zealand cricket should be as anxious as an opener about to face Brett Lee or Shoaib Akhtar: the future of the game as we know it is in jeopardy. If all goes well, the Indian Premier League will slot into the international calender, our top players will be handsomely rewarded and cricket will be reinvigorated. However, a very different outcome is possible, one in which New Zealand suffers badly."
Because so far English players have not been involved in the IPL it is easy for us to watch on without too many concerns. The player auction was a lot of fun wasn't it … seeing all those top names playing Twenty20 cricket will be spectacular won't it. But try looking at the IPL through New Zealand eyes.
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After an eventful one-day series England's tour of New Zealand has moved to Dunedin, the second largest city in the South Island.
The coloured clothing has been put away and the build-up to the Test series has begun with
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It’s fair to say the didn’t go to plan and the has been disappointing – a 3-1 defeat is hard to take.
We went into the game really revved up as a squad, thanks largely to a .
Again, we got off to a fairly decent start, but it wasn’t the easiest pitch to score on and in the end we were probably 20-30 runs short.
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The final one-day match in Christchurch may have ended farcically with Duckworth-Lewis deciding the outcome but England could have few complaints about .
There was widespread surprise when England named an unchanged team, and this was compounded by the fact that New Zealand, who read the conditions correctly, opted to play two spinners. England chose none and, unwisely, continued their policy of choosing just three front-line bowlers.
Clearly, this is because of uncertainty about their batting – and they have every reason to have concerns. But you have to field a team that does not leave the captain constantly searching for options with the ball and, in this part of the world, includes at least one bowler who takes the pace off the ball.
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Until last week, we hadn’t beaten Australia in their own backyard in a Test since 1934. Times have changed!
We shortly after tea on the final day, winning by six wickets to round off a fantastic Australia leg of the tour.
Captain Lottie Edwards won her first (and probably most important) toss of the tour, putting Australia into bat on a day that felt rather more English than Australian.
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It does not take a genius to work out how mad India is for its cricket.
But a new international Twenty20 league, the Indian Premier League, has raised the stakes even higher with $800m (£411m) being spent on TV rights for a 59-game tournament in April, featuring eights teams comprising many of the world's top stars and young Indian players.
On Wednesday in Mumbai, the hotly contested for the players was held and hundreds of millions of dollars were flying around in a secure bidding process to capture the services of cricketers such as Mahendra Dhoni, who went to Chennai for $1.5m (£771,000), Australia's , who cost Hyderabad $1.35m (£694,000), and Sri Lanka veteran Sanath Jayasuriya, who Mumbai forked out $975,000 (£500,000) for.
It was like a high stakes fantasy cricket game with Monopoly money all rolled into one - except it was for real...
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The was a magnificent game which, throughout their run chase, seemed destined to be won by the home side.
They needed 145 from the last 20 overs with eight wickets in hand, and 72 off the last 10 with seven - they paced their innings to perfection.
But mistakes are there to be made, and the man who must feel culpable in New Zealand's failure to secure their win is Scott Styris - one of the most experienced players in the match - who inexplicably planted a catch down long-on's throat with 40 needed from six overs.
It was an extraordinary blunder which enabled England to tighten the noose.
Have a listen to Aggers and Geoff Boycott on today's dramatic match (6m 26s).
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Successive series defeats against India and Sri Lanka have left some wondering if Michael Vaughan's time in charge of the England Test side is running out.
Darren Gough - former England fast bowler, Yorkshire skipper and Strictly Come Dancing star - is not one of them.
He took a short break from the Strictly Come Dancing live tour to talk about his county team-mate’s fate in New Zealand, his future in cricket and his new-found stardom on the dance floor.
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For the travelling England supporter, New Zealand is best traversed by road.
To fly is to miss out on some spectacular scenery, from the snow capped mountains of the Southern Alps, to the beautiful inlets of the , to the rolling green hills of Matamata (Hobbiton, for all those fans).
However the most intriguing and fascinating region has to be that which you pass through en route from Auckland to Napier - a journey which many supporters will have done ahead of the fourth ODI.
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There is always something selfish about people in sport. There has to be. Winning is what matters and the Sussex cricket manager Mark Robinson is no different.
That is why he's delighted that wicket-keeping batsman Matt Prior is back with the county champions at Hove instead of being away with England.
Prior's Test average is now 40 but two bad days in Galle at the end of the Sri Lankan series before Christmas and . Dropped for New Zealand in both formats, now Sussex and the player must move forward and hope his time will come again.
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I have to be honest and say this past week or two has been among the strangest in my cricket career.
We arrived here on the crest of a wave after magnificent series wins and and we just carried that on in the Twenty20 matches, winning both quite comfortably.
We put in a couple of great performances, the fellas were bowling well and smashing the ball to all parts with the bat, and it looked like we were completely dominating the New Zealanders.
Then, in the first two one-day internationals, it was a complete role reversal.
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Any win would do for England before the start of the match in Auckland, and although they made hard work of it, at least they reversed the trend of the , and the series remains alive.
New Zealand were reduced to 95-6 after being put in on a good surface, despite Eden Park’s notoriously short boundaries restricted further by the rope, and had Jacob Oram been given out lbw by when only on five, they would have been snuffed out cheaply.
But he survived and combined with Daniel Vettori to add 74 vital runs, with Oram scoring 88 from 91 balls, including four sixes. The bowler to suffer the most was Dimitri Mascarenhas, recalled by England at the expense of Ravi Bopara - he was hit for 55 runs from seven overs, and Paul Collingwood erred in bowling him one more over than was necessary.
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Drawing a one-day series against Australia in Australia is something we can all be proud of, but we now know that we have the ability to go that one step further.
We started well, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and forcing Australia to put in a very strong performance to beat us in the second.
Then, after rain washed out the third game, going 2-1 up after put us in a position we’ve not been used to in the past – a position from which we could nail a series against the World Cup holders.
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Already in my short time producing Test Match Special I have experienced some rather interesting locations from which we have broadcast the programme.
The jungle of Dambulla in Sri Lanka, where I had to hold a satellite dish among a swarm of flying insects, will always be among my favourites.
But , the location of the second one-day match between England and New Zealand, provided an interesting experience for the TMS commentary team as we were placed in one of four portable cabins held on a temporary scaffold 100 feet in the air.
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If England were very poor in Wellington on Saturday, they were unspeakably awful here in Hamilton.
Paul Collingwood's players seem to have dramatically lost any semblance of confidence, as illustrated by three more run outs here to go with the three in the opening game.
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I really can’t believe what I have watched today! Just as New Zealand’s media had written off its team after their , England produce .
True, the drop-in pitch was slow and did nothing to encourage strokeplay, but England’s batsmen lacked energy and were utterly bereft of ideas to cope with the conditions. No one batted out of his crease.
There was no attempt to get the score moving by taking quick singles, and the lack of vitality led to three unnecessary run-outs - it really was a ghastly performance.
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We are finally in , after the sort of day you don’t expect on a cricket tour to New Zealand;
Airport incidents and security scares are the last things that normally happen in peaceful, picturesque Christchurch. The impact on the England team has been minimal, though.
I switched on the radio in my Christchurch hotel room at 9am to hear early reports of with a woman arrested after reportedly attacking one of the pilots and threatening to blow up the aircraft.
It soon became apparent that it was being treated as a major security incident, the airport was closing and all those inside were being evacuated.
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An puts England in great heart for the 50-over series that starts in Wellington on Saturday.
Their extra experience at this form of the game shone like a beacon under the Lancaster Park floodlights - and it is clear that they took great confidence from their .
Luke Wright and Phil Mustard got the innings away to a tremendous start, thrashing 65 from the first six overs – but this was the only time that New Zealand were in the game as they took four wickets in four overs to reduce England to 76-4.
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has always been highly regarded in – and by in particular – but until at The Oval last summer, he had failed to make an impression in an England shirt.
But . Coming in to bat with England teetering on 117-5 in the 14th over, he carted , the off-spinner, for four successive - and increasingly towering - sixes over long-on. His 31 came from only 14 balls, and although England’s total still looked potentially vulnerable because of the unusually small boundaries at , he did at least set a challenge.
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Welcome to Ask Bearders, where Test Match Special statistician Bill "The Bearded Wonder" Frindall answers your questions on all things cricket.
Below are Bill's responses to some of your questions posed at the end of his last column and if you have a question for Bill, leave it at the end of this blog entry. Please do include your country of residence - Bill loves to hear where all his correspondents are posting from.
Bill isn’t able to answer all of your questions, however. ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Sport staff will choose a selection of them and send them to Bearders for him to answer.
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We’ve been in New Zealand for just over a week and having now adjusted to the time difference, and following the intense training sessions and tactical team meetings, we can’t wait to get started.
We kick off with two Twenty20s this week ahead of the five-match one-day series and, coming here on the back of an last November – which no-one outside of the squad expected I’m sure - we’re determined to keep this England side on the upward curve.
We want to be the best side in the world in one-day and Test cricket and the only way to do that is to go and beat teams in their own backyard – that continues here.
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is the home of Australian cricket, their equivalent of Lord's, so it was a great privilege to start our international series there on Friday.
Around 27,000 people had arrived prior to the to watch us in our own Twenty20 contest.
And while there was obviously a huge amount of support for the home side, there was considerable noise made by English supporters - and some of the Indian fans were particularly vocal.
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