Jaques' wet and wild off-season

It wasn’t quite what Phil Jaques had in mind when he planned his English summer. A season at Worcestershire was intended to prepare him for a possible promotion into Justin Langer’s old spot as one of Australia’s Test openers. But as Jaques told Alex Brown in the Sydney Morning Herald, Worcestershire’s floods have kept him off the ground - literally.

"We went back to the ground to have a look at it, and cars in the car park were completely submerged and pads and gloves and bats were floating across the ground. We had to enter the dressing rooms through the roof, and we fed the swans from the second deck of the pavilion. I've never seen anything like it."

Jaques managed to save his gear but his team-mate Doug Bollinger lost “everything except for one shoe”.

"I got a call from Gareth Batty the other night, asking if he could stay at my place because the road to his house has been cut off. It's been a bit like club cricket, with a lot of people swapping and borrowing gear. It probably hasn't been an ideal season over here, but at least I'll be fresh when I get home."