Friday Weather Update: As Richie Benaud would say, it’s ‘still teeming with rain’. Or in the words of the immortal Twelfth Man ‘it’s coming down in f**ketfulls’. It doesn’t look likely to improve either. Here’s a link to the met office forecast for the Southampton area http://bit.ly/R0zBk
We’ve already had the SWA-LAKE; now it seems that the Gods are watering the Rose Bowl. The third and decisive test match against Sri Lanka started on Thursday – or at least it was supposed to. You’ve got to feel a little sorry for Hampshire really. Having seen inferior venues host a number of test matches over the years, staff at the twenty thousand capacity Rose Bowl were desperate to get off to a good start. Instead they’ve got a damp squib.
The weather forecast for Thursday was extremely dicey: heavy showers in the morning and nothing guaranteed for the rest of play. The BBC website said it was going to clear up in the afternoon but, surprise surprise, it didn’t. The outlook for Friday always looked bleak – bleaker, in fact, than the future of West Indies cricket. I suppose it was always going to be that way … I’ve got a ticket. Didn’t even bother going to the ground in the end.
We’ll be back when play finally does get underway. Will James Anderson pass his fitness test and make the starting XI? Will Steve Finn be kept at the Rose Bowl long enough to ensure he misses whatever match Middlesex are playing? And will Hants skipper Dominic Cork turn up at the ground hoping to blag himself another test cap? Stranger things have happened. Did you hear about that Adrian Shankar bloke who blagged a two year contract at Worcs?!
James Morgan
