The third IPL auction - a more low-key affair than before given that many big names had already been bought and there was a cap of $750,000 - has concluded in Mumbai.

As predicted in The Times, Eoin Morgan was the only England player to find favour, picked up by the Bangalore Royal Challengers for $220,000. Middlesex, Morgan’s county, are resigned to barely seeing the left-handed batsman next season. They have given him their blessing to compete in the whole IPL, in return for which the county will receive 10 per cent of his sale price - about £13,500 in English money.

The IPL starts in mid-March and goes on until April 25. If Bangalore reach the final, Morgan will have to hotfoot it straight away from Mumbai to Guyana, where he will be expected to play for England in their opening World Twenty20 match against West Indies. That tournament concludes on May 16 and Middlesex may see their man for a couple of weeks before he will be required again by England in a one-day series against Australia.

He then goes back to Middlesex for August before having to turn out in blue yet again for a one-day series against Pakistan. Just as well he isn’t a Test cricketer - yet. And at least Middlesex will see more of Andrew Strauss, a useful enough replacement for Morgan, than they might usually do.

Here are the winners and losers from the rest of the auction:

Winners

* Kieron Pollard: the West Indies all-rounder, left, was a huge hit in India during the Champions League Twenty20 in October, particularly during the first of his two matches for Trinidad against New South Wales, when he scored a fifty at three runs a ball. He can bowl well too, and justifies the maximum bid of $750,000 that Mumbai Indians paid for him.

* Shane Bond: the New Zealand fast bowler also went for the maximum $750,000 to Kolkata Knight Riders. His reserve price of $100,000 was fairly low, but bidding was frenzied Read more…

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Until Jonathan Trott plays some more emphatic innings for England, Michael Vaughan’s caustic observations will continue to ring in his ears.

Having revealed that Trott celebrated with the South Africans when they won the Test series in England in 2008, and that “it hit home what English cricket has become like”, Vaughan was having a pop at England’s open-door policy towards overseas opportunists.

He was not the first to cast aspersions on Trott’s patriotism. During Trott’s Test debut at the Oval in August, Ricky Ponting strolled past him and said loudly enough to wicketkeeper Brad Haddin to ensure Trott overheard: “Does he speak like a Pom or a Yarpy?”

Undeterred, Trott contributed a confident 41 in his first Test innings, and that unflappable, Ashes-clinching hundred in his second. What he achieved on such an occasion is a testament to him and the men who chose him and should eclipse any doubts about an expatriate South African’s commitment to the England cause.

We have been here many times before. There was a vivid irony in the 1890s when KS Ranjitsinjhi, born and raised in India but making mountains of runs for Cambridge University and Sussex, was blocked from England selection by the president of the MCC, Lord Harris, because he said only “native-born” players could be chosen.

Harris, a former England captain, was born in Trinidad. Harris was overruled for the next Test, and Ranji exceeded even Trott’s debut, making 62 and 154 not out.

Ranji never got to play a Test against the country of his birth, and neither did Basil D’Oliveira, Tony Greig or Allan Lamb. But you would never have questioned their resolve against Read more…

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James Anderson is “gutted” not to be Andrew Strauss’s vice-captain for England’s tour to Australia this winter. The reason he was not given the responsibility, apparently, is because he is a bowler and from the North.

I suspect that Anderson was speaking with a wry smile, rather than a chip on his shoulder, but he has a point, although it is the bowler bit, rather than coming from the North, that really counts against him.

England have had only three captains in the past 60 years who were fast bowlers. Andrew Flintoff and Ian Botham found the extra responsibility too much. Only Bob Willis (seven wins and six draws in 18 Tests) had much joy. You then have to go back to Gubby Allen to find a fast bowler who captained England - and he lost the 1936 Ashes after leading 2-0. Fast bowlers simply do not make good England captains.

The world was, of course, a happier place when England’s captains were all batsmen and gentlemen amateurs from the Home Counties who could rock up on the morning of a Test after a quick hour’s work shuffling their share portfolios in the City, introduce themselves to the collection of miners who had been dragged away from the pitface to form the England bowling attack and order them into battle.

We may not have won that often, but that was hardly as important as having the right sort of chap to introduce the players to the King during the luncheon interval. You could hardly trust a bowler - especially a northern one - with that sort of responsibility.

The “anti-Northern” argument is less credible now. Sixty-two of England’s past 92 Tests were led by men from the North (Vaughan and Flintoff). Mike Atherton had 54 Tests in charge from 1993-2001. Chuck in Paul Collingwood and his 25 ODIs as captain and the North has Read more…

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A liability against Australia, a match-winner in South Africa – Stephen Brenkley speaks to the comeback king who blasted his side into the Champions Trophy semi-finals

To explain England’s bizarre exhibitions of the one-day arts, their captain Andrew Strauss often compares them to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It is an easy, inexact shorthand, but it means that England can be useless one day and magnificent the next.

Mr Hyde, who had been overstaying his welcome and appeared resistant to desperate blandishments to shove off, has for the time being left. Dr Jekyll is in town. Owais Shah perfectly symbolises this dichotomy. In his case choose any antonymic extreme you fancy: chalk, cheese, lager, beer, day, night, beautiful, ugly.

For weeks leading up the Champions Trophy, Shah had not only been dreadful, he had been a menace. Not only was he out of form but he was getting out in soppy ways like prodding to mid-off. And not only that but his running between the wickets was so ill-judged that neither he nor his partners were safe.

Nor was that all. In an incident which seemed to embody his state he tackled his batsman colleague Joe Denly in a warm-up up kickabout, injuring the newcomer’s knee and putting him out of action. It was a mess and England matched it.

They were crushed in the NatWest Series against Australia and Shah grew steadily worse. They came to the Champions Trophy in equal disarray. England had no hope whatever of progress and Shah was playing for his career. Indeed if regulations had allowed the team to change the squad last week it would have been terminated. But the only way players can be replaced is if they are injured. Shah was not – but it might have occurred to the selectors to give him Read more…

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Tickets for a day at a Lord’s Test can cost £100 – about six times as much as you would pay in Australia or India where the biggest venues are three times the size of the ‘home of cricket’

Lord’s was a 28,000 sell-out for the first four days of the second Test and more than three-quarters full for Monday’s play, which finished before lunch. Being there was a privilege, though, that cost the cricket lover an eye-watering £100, a price the England and Wales Cricket Board felt able to charge because of unanswerable demand.

The ECB say that a minimum of 50,000 tickets could have been sold for each of the opening three days at Lord’s, Cardiff’s Swalec Stadium for the first Test, or Edgbaston, Headingley and The Oval, the five grounds where the 2009 Ashes will be decided. But the ECB are unable to satisfy demand because English Test grounds are too small. While Lord’s is the largest international ground in this country, it will still be only the 16th largest regular Test venue in the world even when its proposed redevelopment is completed.

Wembley and Twickenham, the national football and rugby stadiums, are the wrong dimensions to convert into temporary grounds – unlike, say, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where 100,000 spectators can be packed in for cricket or Australian rules football. The MCG stages nearly 50 matches a year.

In 1953, 549,650 watched England win a five-match Ashes series 1-0, a record for the contest. Five years earlier, 158,000 saw Don Bradman’s Invincibles defeat England at Read more…

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Right then, where to start...

I had a really good couple of days in Prague with my parents who have come over to visit my sister and me. We walked miles and saw virtually everything there was to see there. A great city for sightseeing and enjoying a cheap beer. There was a small break in our schedule that allowed the quick trip away and it was nice to spend some time with Mum and Dad and also away from the game for a couple of days; after getting back there was time for a good training session and then into another Championship match against Middlesex.

Last time we played Middlesex we held on for a very good draw after being in some trouble. A really good maiden hundred from James Taylor made sure we didn’t lose. The team we faced then, at Southgate, was, in the batting department anyway, stronger. Strauss (England) and Hughes (Australia) opened up and put on around 180 for the first wicket; they batted brilliantly and I bowled poorly in this game, no rhythm and no direction. Both these two are facing off in the Ashes and that was a good thing for us. Read more...

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Established: 1814
Capacity: 30,000
Floodlights: Yes
Ends: Pavilion End, Nursery End
Home Team: Middlesex
Test History: 116 Tests; 43 home wins, 27 away wins, 46 draws
Ashes History: 32 Tests; 5 England wins, 14 Australia wins, 13 draws
Last 10 Tests: 3 home wins, 1 away win, 6 draws
Last 10 Tosses: 4 batted first (1 win, 3 draws); 6 bowled first (1 win, 2 defeats, 3 draws)

Overview
As the home of English cricket - indeed world cricket - it has been suggested that Lord’s inspires the opposition more than it does the hosts.

It’s a theory that certainly holds water when it comes to the Australians. England haven’t beaten the old enemy at HQ since before the Second World War and have only one win since the reign of Queen Victoria.

In recent years it has become sometihng of a batting paradise - despite the infamous slope - and has produced a fair number of draws. Indeed, six Tests in a row here were drawn between Australia’s 2005 victory and England’s three-day defeat of West Indies earlier this summer. However, the pitch is playing rather quicker this year by all accounts and offering assistance for everyone rather than just fancy-dan batsman looking to get their name on the dangerously overcrowded Lord’s honours board.

Despite the MCC’s reputation for stuffiness, the ground has been extensively redeveloped to keep it at the forefront of cricketing venues, and many of the additions - notably the futuristic Media Centre at the Nursery End - are strikingly modern without diminishing the famous venue’s historical power.

Last time out
England beat West Indies by 10 wickets to end a run of six straight draws at HQ against an out-of-sorts and apparently uninterested Windies outfit. Ravi Bopara’s 143 and Graeme Swann’s entertaining 63 not out took England to Read more…

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Australia batting prodigy Phillip Hughes believes he is starting to hit form again in the lead-up to the Ashes, starting in Cardiff on July 8.

The 20-year-old New South Wales batsman enhanced his reputation for quick scoring on a six-week stint with Middlesex at the start of the summer, but on a sunny Friday in Hove a 7,000 sell-out crowd witnessed a more studied approach.

The right-hander from Macksville occupied the crease for over two-and- a-half hours for his 78 that included 11 fours, only to be bowled for the second time in the match by Sussex’s South African seamer Pepler Sandri following an over-ambitious waft across the line.

Undaunted by missing out on his hundred, Hughes said: “You look to get a fair bit out of these practice games in the lead-up to the first Test and you have to take them seriously. Read more…

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