Yorkies would keel over in shock

Yorkies would keel over in shock.That is not to say that, given the right conditions, as here, Hooper and Campbell will not prosper, but this performance should be placed in context. Campbell has almost no experience of facing top-class quick bowling in English air and light and off English turf. Hooper, older, wiser and sometimes sadder after his experiences with Kent, is not by nature an opening batsman; he could never play the film double for Geoff Boycott. Should they win the nomination, the news will not be greeted with dismay by England.Both are traditional Caribbean stroke players. DEREK HODGSON

reports from Taunton
West Indies 398-5 v SomersetThe vexed question of who opens for the West Indies in the six-match Test series may have been answered here by a stand of 241 in 52 overs between Carl Hooper and Sherwin Campbell. The last four Ashes series, in fact, have been a total fluke.ENGLAND 13: M A Atherton (Lancashire, capt), A J Stewart (Surrey, wkt), G A Hick (Worcestershire), G P Thorpe (Surrey), M R Ramprakash (Middlesex), N H Fairbrother (Lancashire), A P Wells (Sussex), D G Cork (Derbyshire), P A J DeFreitas (Derbyshire), D Gough (Yorkshire), S D Udal (Hampshire), A R C Fraser (Middlesex), P J Martin (Lancashire).. There were times in Australia when Crawley made Philip Tufnell looked like Jonty Rhodes, and although Illingworth admires the way Crawley has since shed a couple of stone in weight, the accent on fielding is now so pronounced (in Test as well as one-day cricket) that Crawley will always lose out to the likes of Mark Ramprakash in any marginal deliberation.There were any number of mentions in dispatches – Hollioake, Craig White (“not bowling well enough at the moment”) Trevor Ward, Jason Gallian – and while it is fair to say that encouragement is no bad thing, it also suggests that England are not mug enough to fall into Australia’s fatal trap of identifying a hard-core of talent and sticking with it.

He plays a couple of games, and then you don’t see him again for weeks.”The omission of John Crawley certainly has Illingworth’s fingerprints on it, as Atherton rates Crawley considerably more highly than his chairman. It is the old story of the selectors requiring only the flimsiest of evidence to persuade themselves that Bloggs is an all-rounder, when the only genuine all-rounder England have had since Ian Botham has been Alec Stewart.Chris Lewis might have been a contender, had it not been for a body that appears to be allergic to cricket gear, and Illingworth acknowledged as much when he said: “I don’t know. Gee him up a bit.” One of Illingworth’s compliments, though, came from the back of the hand when he said: “There’s not a lot of seam bowling talent around.”Glen Chapple, an A-team tourist last winter, and Mike Watkinson, a batsman who can bowl both seam-up and off-spin, were both thought more likely picks than Martin from the Lancashire dressing-room, but the selectors are apparently worried about Chapple carrying a minor knee niggle, and Watkinson’s name did not receive much air time in lengthy deliberations over the fringe candidates.One of those was Surrey’s 23-year-old all-rounder, Adam Hollioake, a stylish right-hand batsman who, according to Illingworth, only needs to improve his seam bowling a little more to be a serious contender for the Test squad Dear oh dear, here we go again. CRICKET

BY MARTIN JOHNSON
There may be other surprises on the way this summer, but short of England winning the Test series 6-0, and Ray Illingworth subsequently claiming that it had nothing to do with him, yesterday’s selection of Peter Martin of Lancashire in the 13-man Texaco Trophy squad will take some beating.The inclusion of last winter’s A-team captain, Alan Wells, may have been mildly unexpected, but Wells has long been one of the country’s classier batsmen, and hardly compares with the elevation of the 26-year-old Lancashire pace bowler from the “Who’s He?” ranks of English cricket.One theory might be that Illingworth, fed up of hearing that no one else gets a vote under his autocratic chairmanship, said to his captain on Thursday: “OK, Michael, just this once I’m going to give you a pick.” And Atherton responded by dipping into his own dressing-room at Old Trafford and tossing in a name guaranteed to bring a bewildered expression to his chairman’s face.However, Illingworth appeared to have ruled out this particular scenario yesterday when he said: “I’ve watched Martin three times this summer, and Athers confirms that he has bowled well I rated him last year, and this might just give him a taste. Either way, it is prospectively another mammoth step towards overt professionalism which the New Zealanders, terrified of the threat posed by rugby league, have now espoused with a fervour that has taken aback even the South Africans and Australians.No such worries – not yet, anyway – for England, whose only commercial concern is to make sure two-thirds of the squad wear Cellnet jerseys and one-third Courage at training, though yesterday Dean Richards was seen wearing a simple England cap emblazoned with only a rose before a hamstring twinge prompted his early, precautionary retirement.. “We have had discussions after the disappointment of losing to Italy but now the morale of the players could not be higher,” Reid said.

“The story is rubbish and the last thing we need in the build-up to the World Cup.”What is as good as settled, however, is that Gerry Murphy will cease to be coach once the tournament is over and the IRFU make a new appointment. No matter what happens in South Africa, Murphy himself expects then to be relieved of his duties even though he has allowed his name to go forward, along with those of John O’Driscoll, the former Lions flanker, and Harry Williams, ex-coach of Ulster.Meanwhile, in Cape Town yesterday the establishment of a southern-hemisphere equivalent of the Five Nations’ Championship moved significantly nearer when the leaders of the South African, New Zealand and Australian unions set up a company to decide on the format of international and interprovincial competitions as well as handling attendant commercial negotiations.This development followed the revelation in New Zealand that the NZRFU was on the point of reaching agreement with Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd to support the formation of new competitions. But yesterday the two Murphys sat together at a table with Ken Reid, the Irish Rugby Football Union president who happens to come from Belfast, to lend substance to their denial. All of us involved in the planning for this event have done our homework and tried to plan for all possibilities.

But there is no such thing as a perfect plan,” Leon Els, a senior SAA manager, said.. STEVE BALE

reports from Durban
While England’s World Cup squad were steadily boiling as they trained in yesterday’s relentless heat here in Durban, the Irish management were boiling with rage at a report from home that one of them was part of the management no longer.The bizarre piece of disinformation that had emerged in Belfast had it that Gerry Murphy, the coach, had been sacked after journeying all the way to Johannesburg with his erstwhile team and that Noel Murphy, the manager, had been put in complete control.The report appears to have arisen from Ireland’s wretched effort in Italy a fortnight ago. The biggest price hikes have come in Johannesburg, where there are still rooms available. Cape Town and Durban, however, are more or less fully booked.”There is a perception that flights and hotels are booked throughout the World Cup, but it’s only the critical periods when they will be difficult to find.