Tom Smith - voter apathy likely to hold him back

We've neglected our Tips for the Future for quite a while now. It occurred to us that maybe Tom Smith of Lancashire warranted inclusion after he took 4-55 yesterday.

By any standards Tom Smith has had a blazing start to the season, but there are a few factors counting against him. Our Tips for the Future are meant to be international players who we hope will make a big impact at Test level and in that regard we have a few reservations about Tom Smith.

If other observers are to be believed, he's not actually fast, but fast-medium. In international cricket we don't have a great deal of time for fast-medium bowlers. It's the difference between Old Jason Gillespie and Current Jason Gillespie for example. Also, there's the first season syndrome, where players achieve a great deal because no-one knows what they're doing. The following season when opposing players are familiar with them, they struggle.

Conversely, he's clearly doing something right to take all these wickets; we thought that he was quite quick; and rumour has it he can bat a bit. So should we make the leap and induct him in our Tips for the Future or not? There's nothing at stake because we don't have any credibility, but we would have to write another post and then copy the link into the Tips for the Future post. If there's any opinion either way from our readers, we'll go with that.

Will Jefferson's in the England A squad

Despite playing about once all season, England have included part-man, part-turret, Will Jefferson in their A squad for the tour of Bangladesh. With his gargantuan physique and brilliantine white skin, Will'll blend in seamlessly with the locals.

Also included are Nick Compton, Adil Rashid and Tom Smith - all of whom we're quite interested in.

Matt Prior's in again as well. He's quickly becoming the new Glen Chapple - a perpetual A-tourist.

Tom Smith, Lancashire - one to watch in 2007

Last year Tom Smith was a late addition to our Ones To Watch after he'd impressed us on the opening day of the season.

We've been swinging between reincluding Tom or replacing him with Kyle Hogg, who also looked pretty good when we saw him last season. As you can see, we've gone for Tom Smith. This is partly loyalty and partly our discovery that he has 'a bowling face'.

A bowling face is a crucial part of a young cricketer's development. If you've no bowling face, you can only ever go so far. With a bowling face in your armoury, the sky's the limit.

Hopefully his batting will pick up as well. He's rumoured to be 'handy'.

Other Ones To Watch in 2007

Tom Smith - season verdict

The most personal of the Ones To Watch, being as he won us over on the first day of the season. We're glad that we went for him as a result of that, but it was probably a little premature.

Tom Smith took 35 wickets at 30.65, which is okay, but maybe not worth looking out for. He got into the Academy though. That's a pretty big thing in our opinion, although you probably aren't that impressed. Well just what would impress you, eh? Do you want Tom Smith to sprout wings and swoop around in the outfield? Do you want him to give you free gold during the lunch break?

You people will crush the young cricketers of this nation with your stellar expectations.

In a word: Parkin.

Back to the end of season verdicts

Tom Smith - half-term report

We're sick of using that picture of Tom Smith, but he's got such a boring name it's hard to find pictures of him. If you've got one will you send it to us?

Tom Smith has faded a bit since the start of the season. We still don't know whether he's 'brisk', 'lively' or 'bowls a heavy ball' either. He's very enigmatic. We should give him points for that alone, even though we're not using a points system and are in fact just plucking grades out of the air with very little consideration.

In the spirit of that:

Verdict: B-
Encouraging and enigmatic. We haven't seen much of his batsmanship, which is rumoured to be quite tidy.

First day of the cricket season: A photo journal

It's the first day of the cricket season. The nation's buzzing. We went down to Old Trafford for Lancashire against Hampshire to sample the party atmosphere.



This was what the sky looked like this morning. We Mancunians pride ourselves on knowing the local weather. These aren't rain clouds.


Hmm. We're not in north Lancashire or south-west Cheshire. We're in the bit without "brighter, drier intervals".

This picture tells us two things: That we're still in our house at 13:06 because of the rain and that we like to pile CDs on top of our stereo.

Woolly hat. Check. Ski socks. Check. It's officially a 'double trousers day' too. Readers in warmer climes may be unfamiliar with the concept of wearing two pairs of trousers simultaneously. Believe us, sometimes it can and must be done.

Play eventually started at 3pm. Lancashire asked Hampshire to bat which meant that we didn't have to endure Iain Sutcliffe's batting. Even Iain Sutcliffe's mum's favourite cricketer isn't Iain Sutcliffe.

Lancashire opened the bowling with ageing medium-pace all-rounder, Glenn Chapple...

...and ageing medium-pace all-rounder, Dominic Cork.

We missed John Crawley's wicket. This is where they put the big screen when there's a Test match.

Glenn Chapple enjoys a bit of banter with the crowd.

Here are a few notable names who could have been playing in this fixture, but weren't: Kevin Pietersen, Shane Warne, James Anderson, Andrew Flintoff, Brad Hodge and Sajid Mahmood. Not to worry though, because the Old Trafford faithful were treated to Dominic Thornely and Nic Pothas instead...

We hadn't seen Tom Smith before, but we were impressed. He consistently made the batsmen play and on occasions beat them for pace. He fully deserved his 3-29. Are we the first off the mark in lauding him? What do we win?

We were slightly disappointed that nobody spoke to us, like World Cup winner, Andy Bichel did, but we still had a good day, largely due to Lancashire's success and partly due to the large amount of clothes we wore.

Ones To Watch: Tom Smith, Lancashire

Is this your website? Do you make the rules? No. It's ours and we say that we can still squeeze in another One To Watch, even though the season's already started. Besides, this one's based on our own first-hand judgement during the first day of the season.

Everywhere we can find a mention of him, Tom Smith's described as medium-pace, but we thought he looked quite quick. We could be wrong. He's lauded for his batting on the ECB website, which is encouraging, although his bowling isn't mentioned at all.

Essentially, we don't know a great deal about him at all. We just wanted to be first off the mark in tipping a player for success. Our grounds for this are that he looked good when we saw him and then his taking 3-8 off eight overs against Leicestershire today, in the C&G Trophy. We think that's plenty to go off and we stand by his addition to the Ones To Watch pantheon. And yes, we know it's not strictly speaking a pantheon, but we've not had much to eat today, we're a bit short-tempered and frankly, we're feeling antagonistic towards our own readership - such as it is.

God. This reads terribly. We really shouldn't post anything on days like today.