The day captaincy changes forever
Cricinfo
25-Feb-2013
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Lawrence Booth writes in the Guardian that captain Kevin Pietersen will face an unprecedented set of problems when the Stanford match takes place. He points out that besides Pietersen's man-management skills being tested to the full due to the massive amount of money at stake, the Stanford series makes it tough for him in another way:
The selectors and Pietersen must now be utterly ruthless because the format leaves them no option. There can be no planning for the future, no experimenting with batting line-ups, no sentiment, no fun - all of which take place even in Test cricket. We will discover which players are considered the big-game cricketers and which the captain regards as flaky.
In the same paper, Andy Bull says the right squads were chosen and that the incremental contracts handed to Tim Ambrose, Ravi Bopara, Samit Patel, Matthew Prior, Owais Shah, Graeme Swann and Luke Wright could be a pointer to the nucleus of the future England side.
And Kevin Eason wonders in the Times whether England will be as much of a team when they fly home after the extravagant one-off contest as when they arrive.
Also read Rob Smyth's take on the England selection on his blog in the Wisden Cricketer.
Stanford stands for ostentatiousness, razzmatazz and affluence, but none of that was on show at Lord’s. There was just an everyday squad announcement, delivered by Geoff Miller with all the zest of a bingo club manager announcing who had made the team for next weekend’s fixture away to the Grimsby Septuagenarians. There was no showbiz: dancing girls, no boxing-style nicknames for the players. And no surprises among the names.