Scribes in the sun

Tim de Lisle has written an enjoyable piece in today's Independent profiling some of the national newspaper correspondents from Britain.

Mike Selvey

THE GUARDIAN

AGED 58

Selvey has been in the job 20 years, and somehow combines it with being the father of 10-year-old triplets. Solid county bowler who had one great day for England in 1976. Had a hard act to follow in the sparkling Matthew Engel, but has pulled it off by fully reinventing himself, as signalled by his hair - once flowing, now non-existent.

Selvey captains a literate team that plays its shots right down the order: his deputy, David Hopps, could easily be a chief correspondent elsewhere. Selvey himself wields a sharp simile; is more outspoken than his immediate rivals (he has firmly pooh-poohed England's World Cup chances); and writes a fine weekly column, especially when explaining the business of bowling. Bowlers always say that it's a batsman's world, but this doesn't seem to have stopped them from nabbing the best writing jobs.

Colin Bateman

THE DAILY EXPRESS

AGED 52

The Daily Mail is famous for its consistency, while its old rival the Express lurches from one crisis to the next - but when it comes to cricket, the Express is the more settled of the two. The Mail has had many cricket writers since the late, great Ian Wooldridge and its most recent incumbent, the capable Mike Dickson, is about to revert to tennis. Meanwhile, Colin Bateman has been at the Express since 1987, the longest continuous stint of any current cricket correspondent. Not to be confused with the novelist of the same name, Bateman is genial, low-key and much respected. "Nothing gets past him," says one admiring rival. He scooped the pack on Duncan Fletcher's appointment as England coach in 1999 and broke the story that there would be an open-top bus parade in 2005. Last June, he wrote of the England team: "You can only live on past glories for so long ..." If only they had been paying attention.