Sandcastles At Dawn

So with a Test match cancelled due to a bad pitch, England are now left twiddling their thumbs. But NWG has been thinking and instead of wasting the day sitting in the dressing room and playing cards, she's come up with a way to allow for a result to be reached. And today.

NWG proposes a sandcastle competition between England and the West Indies to be judged and adjudicated by the Umpires (they should have to earn their money at least).

The most complicated wins.

Or the tallest wins.

Or the one with the most turrets wins.

Or the one featuring a cricket field, complete with batting square wins.

Or the one NWG decides she likes the most wins (although wouldn't technically be fair, as she would definitely choose England, but not if Ryan Sidebottom made it).

If only Stanford was interested in sandcastles, he could have come up with a winning prize fund instead of NWG only being able to offer a bottle of beer (still, beggars can't be choosers).

Still, it will keep them busy at least.

It could even be dragged out for five days, with each day becoming more and more intricate. NWG can't help but feel this is really and truly an excellent idea.

England Are Ship Shape

Ok, Ok, so Flintoff and Harmison went off at the deep end. They suffered the humiliation at the hands of a nifty West Indian side and all they wanted to do was escape and go on a bit of a jolly.

No harm in that, is there?

NWG sees no harm in letting off steam.

Just no letting Freddy on a pedalo. He seems to have a weakness when in the West Indies, but a luxury liner holding Christopher Martin Jenkins is probably harmless.

NWG can see it now: Freddy and Harmison, smoking jackets on, glass of whiskey in hand discussing shares in oil companies or suchlike and laughing at all of us stuck in the snow, wind and rain. And when finished, hopping on a helicopter back to the island.

Nice work if you can get it.

Strauss Says What Every England Fan Knows

Trying to shrug off the mess of yesterday is hard. Not only did England play badly (aside from the West Indies playing brilliantly - let's not forget that part), this is not the year for batting disasters.

Maybe England are just getting it out of the way for 2009.

If so, excellent. If not, bugger.

Andrew Strauss, the poor man (KP must be relieved and rubbing his hands with glee to get out of this firing line), said that he's "pretty angry."

Well, at least that's something. Strauss has feelings. Brilliant.

The main question is: can England remember how to bat before the next Test?

NWG is more than happy to fly out and give her opinion on the matter (given that she has never played cricket, it's more than likely that her advice would be of high class and extremely useful).

ECB: you know where her email address is.