Preparing for an Ashes winter

Well obviously the only preparation I really have to do for the winter now that the Club have put the nets out of use (dammit!) is put my kitbag in the loft, but I haven't the heart to yet so I thought I'd give the blog a thorough tidy-up. As you'll have noticed, the scoreboard and bowling figures have gone. Not much point having them on display all winter, not least for my own sanity as I'm sick of that big fat zero, so instead I've totted up my season's figures. They make for pretty bleak reading it has to be said... The next thing you'll notice is my Twitter feed. I know Twitter can be pretty inane at times (trust me, I've seen the conversations between Anderson, Finn and Swann...) but I thought that when the Ashes are on this would be a better way of communicating my reactions to the world than clogging the blog up with comments like "Pietersen you muppet, you needn't fish at that one!"

I'm not sure yet how I'll follow the Ashes this year, last time round I tuned into Test Match Special but this time I'm tempted to get a Sky subscription on my computer. It's not cheap though and having tried it out for a month I found that my computer was inexplicably changing its identity, meaning that after a while Sky thought it was five different computers and cut me off. At least I got to see the Trott-Broad partnership at Lord's though. The TMS route is a pretty old-school option, although it has to be said cricket on the radio can be remarkably gripping.

In other news I've decided it's about time I nail a County's colours to my mast and I've decided it's Warwickshire for me. I took a few days agonising over it, since in Staffordshire there's no obvious choice. I looked at all the neighbouring counties - Warwickshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Worcestershire - plus Lancashire and Yorkshire. I had a big soft spot for Yorkshire because so many of my favourite players seem to have come from there, Hoggard, Vaughan and Rashid being the obvious examples, but in the end I decided Headingley was just too damn far away. I ruled out most of the neighbouring counties for one reason or another (I think I've only actually set foot in Notts once, for example), so I was left with either Lancashire or Warwickshire. What ultimately tipped the balance was the leg-spin connection, with a whole stand at Edgbaston named after Bradman's famous party-pooper Eric Hollies. Added to that we have Imran Tahir's match-winning spell in the CB40 final yesterday, and the fact that Edgbaston's a reasonable distance away, and it all fits snugly into place. Also a Liverpool fan such as myself can never think of Old Trafford with too much warmth!