Save the West Indian tiger from extinction

With Matt Prior making a hundred on his Test debut, the headline writers in this morning’s papers have been enjoying themselves. “Prior appointment”, “England shine with no Prior warning” and “Put out the welcome Matt” were among the better ones. The Times went for a more sober “Uninhibited Prior proves pick of England’s four centurions”.

In The Daily Telegraph Simon Hughes talks of his previous with Prior.

Playing a charity match to launch a new ground a few years ago, I experienced Prior's power first hand. Still to cement a place in the Sussex first team, he hit an early exploratory delivery back over the bowler's head for a flat six and singed the cover fielder's hands with his driving. My best deliveries on a dodgy pitch were repelled hard and there was an imposing physicality about him at the wicket which was quite intimidating. He's not a batsman to offer throwdowns to in the nets. His drives would ravage your shins.

The one man who England are still desperate to replace is Alec Stewart, who retired in 2003, and it is he who has been helping Prior:

"Alec has been brilliant," Prior said. "The minute I got the phone call, Alec was the third person I called after my mum and dad.

"You get times when you feel a bit anxious, or need to ask a few questions, and it's been wonderful to have someone like him with all that experience at the other end of the phone. He would say 'It'll be alright, just worry about your own game.' Two weeks ago he came down and we had a two-hour batting session."

In The Times Simon Barnes laments the continued decline of West Indies cricket:

And now – like the impending extinction of a fierce and terrible carnivore – there is a complex suite of reasons for decline, no one more important than any other. We are faced with a fierce and terrible question: can anything be done to save it? Save the West Indian Tiger! Let us recreate the habitat in which it thrives, nurture West Indian fast bowlers in captivity before releasing them into the wild, build reserves and national parks where batsmen can reach full maturity unmolested by the dangers of the modern world. Let us have an international appeal: the West Indian Tiger must not go extinct!

Not everyone goes to Lord's to watch the cricket, however. Writing in The Independent, Brian Viner tells of the joys of ambling, quaffing and nattering at one of the great social occasions in British sport. "The quality of the nattering is, of course, directly influenced by the amount of quaffing ..."

The amble around the Lord's perimeter is one of life's sporting pleasures, the contemporary equivalent of the Regency promenade, when gentlefolk took the air principally to see and be seen. During my Beau Brummell-style perambulation on Thursday, I spotted the England coach, Peter Moores, looking determined, a bishop looking solemn, Trevor Francis looking anxious, and Richie Benaud looking more than ever like a fastidious retired hairdresser

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