Cricket Preview

The northern summer gets underway (barely a week after a southern hemisphere test series finished) with the first England Sri Lanka test at Lord's. I have yet to dip my toes in the water on this, and will wait for toss, teams and pics. The only media I can find on the pitch is Flintoff describing it as a nice batting strip; but I tend to take such comments with a grain of salt. More to the point, I'll wait to see if England play their spinner as an indication of what they expect the pitch to do.

I'm finding this test trickier than most - last year's test (the Ashes) saw a clatter of wickets on the first day; quite unusual for Lord's where even in May reasonable first innings scores are obtained (not least by Sri Lanka four years ago). Current prices are England 1.56, Sri Lanka 9.4 and the Draw 3.9 - I'm hesitant to lay the draw at those odds even with a reasonably good weather forecast.

So no bet for me until toss and teams.