Cricket Diary: Ramps steps up for England

By Richard Gibson

Such have been the advances since English cricket’s first academy intake 11 years ago – which included Andrew Strauss, Graeme Swann and Andrew Flintoff – that the 2012-13 Performance Programme players preparing to shadow the Test tour in India have 17 support staff in tow.

Two of that number are new faces in the recently-retired former England batsman Mark Ramprakash and Karl Krikken, head coach of Derbyshire.

Ramprakash is to spend a fortnight in India as a second batting coach, working under his ex-international colleague Graham Thorpe, before spending another two-week stint with the England Under-17 group before Christmas.

The 42-year-old is undecided on his post-playing future and has taken up the offer to work with the country’s young batsmen to assess whether coaching is the next stage on his career path.

Meanwhile, Krikken will work with the EPP’s wicketkeepers as Bruce French is unavailable to travel to India for family reasons. Former Derbyshire keeper Krikken was recommended to performance director David Parsons by French, who recently signed a longer-term deal with the England and Wales Cricket Board along with fielding coach Chris Taylor.

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Seven of the country’s most promising pacemen are working with the ECB’s lead bowling coach Kevin Shine both at the national academy in Loughborough and at the High Performance Centre in Potchefstroom, South Africa, pre-Christmas.

Somerset’s Overton twins, Jamie and Craig, three left-armers Tymal Mills, Reece Topley and David Willey, plus Matthew Dunn, of Surrey, and 18-year-old Middlesex bowler Tom Helm are those being monitored.

Mills was clocked in excess of 90 miles per hour during testing last winter and early results this year shows that his Essex team-mate Topley has put on an impressive seven miles per hour and has not lost any of his swing having moved up into the low 80s.

Helm, who played for Buckinghamshire at schoolboy levels, caught the eye of Shine during a Middlesex Under-17 session last year, and played for England Under-19s this year.

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Azhar Mahmood is on the market for a Friends Life t20 deal next summer having agreed an early release from Kent. Pakistan’s Mahmood had one year remaining on his contract at Canterbury and earlier this year downgraded his terms to a Twenty20-specific contract in order to participate in the Sri Lanka Premier League.

Now, he has severed links with the county completely and is expected to agree a handful of deals elsewhere including a gig in England next summer.

The 37-year-old all-rounder has continued to show his worth on the global stage in Twenty20, impressing at the Indian Premier League with Kings XI Punjab and again in the Champions League with Auckland Aces last month.

With stints with Sri Lanka’s Wayamba United and Dhaka Gladiators, of Bangladesh, on the cards, as well as returns to New Zealand and India, Mahmood is also being considered as a stand-in overseas player in Australia’s Big Bash League.

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Cricket Australia have already broken with one-day international protocol by experimenting with the regulations of their domestic 50-over cricket, and now face a proposal to shake-up the four-day game for the good of their national side.

For the second season running, Australia’s Ryobi Cup permits a bowler to send down up to 13 overs rather than the mandatory 10-over limit imposed elsewhere around the world. Two years ago, they experimented with split innings.

And now Victoria coach Greg Shipperd has put forward the suggestion that the Sheffield Shield, the country’s traditional four-day competition, reverts to 12-a-side.

While doing so would relinquish the competition’s first-class status, the flip side, according to Shipperd, would be to create more chances for players with aspirations to wear the baggy green cap.

The proposal to employ 12-a-side, limited to 11 players fielding and 11 batting, was a by-product of Victoria’s surplus of internationals. Thirteen of their squad members have represented Australia, and another couple have featured for the A side in the past year, meaning that some have had to miss out on occasion.

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Date: 09/11/2012 23:00:00 by Richard Gibson
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