Bairstow. And rightly so. The kid is a real talent, even if he does bear an uncanny resemblance to Todd Flanders.

I saw him a few times last season when he wasn't keeping and he's a right gobby so and so isnt he?? I suppose you need that, especially being a keeper!
Do you think keeping and batting fairly high up the order will work for him?

Aren't all keepers? Annoying, lying gits the lot of em*.


At the moment, there's no choice. Mind, he has looked solid with the bat so far when the rest of the top order has failed miserably. He is a good batsman in his own right - seeing him launch one out of Trent Bridge last season was a bit special - and it doesn't seem to faze him having to combine the roles. If he was opening, I'd have an issue, but not playing him at four or five.





* - except Kumar Sangakkara who is a total gentleman.

Good start for Lancs this morning. Sussex started on 147-0 and are now 186-4.

Sussex now 5 down and still 70 behind....Come on Lancs and come on the weather, play fair for once....

A frustrating innings by Naved Arif (a career high 66 n.o. at the moment) looks more likely to scupper Lancs than the weather today. Annoyingly Monty Panesar's hung around with him for 11 overs!

Yorkshire lose again. The Borren avatar stays.

Feeble batting performance by Yorkshire against a mediocre Derbyshire attack.

Better effort in the Championship game over the four sessions at Trent Bridge mind. Career best for Joe Root, falling five short of a hundred, and a maiden first class century for Jonny Bairstow.

Yorkshire 383-8 just before lunch on day two.

Yorkshire look at least 2 batters short of being a good side to me. Fair play to the ones they have who are doing a decent job of holding it together.

A couple of injuries and poor form and I feel I might get a phone call though.

double ton - good effort.

A super effort to be fair, but it still looks a fragile top order

Lancashire hammer Warwickshire with Keedy and Kerrigan getting the last 8 wickets for just 9 runs between them. Glorious stuff.

Chris Gayle smacked 37 off one over for Bangalore today.

I have not mistyped anything in that previous sentence.

20/20 cricket will be the death of cricket as most fans know and love it.....All it is doing is breeding a generation of players who think smacking every ball out of the ground is the way to 'build' an innings.

In every game I've played this year, I've seen youngsters (16-19year olds) approach their innings with total disregard for anything resembling a defence.....Yes, many have the talent to hit a ball a long way, but none of them have the ability to spend more than 20 minutes at the crease.

Yes, its entertaining to watch the likes of Gayle, but if I wanted to watch glorified slogging, I'd watch baseball.

Decent recovery from Yorkshire yesterday, from 7-2 and 99-5 to a current position of 343-9. The depth in the batting line-up is coming in handy with the top order currently looking very wobbly.

Not quite sure why we're still batting though, given the weather forecast is iffy for the next three days.