The Underdogs

So another test series involving England is soon to start. I'm getting excited. After Australia, India are probably England's greatest rivals and the passion for cricket over there means that the atmosphere at the Tests should be great (or do the locals ignore test matches in favour of the one day stuff - I don't know). It also seems as if the England team are prepared for this one. Simon Jones has been out in India for a while, getting used to bowling with the SG ball (the one used over there), getting it to swing, which is encouraging. Andrew Strauss says he's been concentrating on playing spin and knows that he has to do better than he did in Pakistan. In a press conference last week, Vaughan made a similar comment, about the team in general. Pietersen has even shaved his head. It seems that there is a collective determination that there wasn't for the series in Pakistan. After the Ashes series, I guess they were favourites this team (although I thought it would be evenly balanced). This time around, they are definitely the underdogs, but, as was evident in that Ashes series, perhaps they enjoy a challenge. We'll see. I can't wait.
Interesting to see that the ICC have decided to end the ridiculous super-subs experiment, which seemed flawed from the start. They say though that they're trying to think of other ways to make one day cricket more exciting. Why not just play less of them? The biggest reason for many one day matches being dull is that they're largely meaningless. The players aren't bothered. The cricket watching public see too many of them. Now we have he ridiculous situation in which the next Ashes series is going to be squeezed into 6 weeks between one day competitions which no one could be bothered about.