The Carnival of Cricket is about to start in the Caribbean following the opening ceremony in Jamaica. I didn't stay up to watch it after celebrating England's rugby victory over the French a little too heavily! It was great to see how the youngsters came in and played without fear. Even more interesting will be the selection for the number 10 shirt next week against Wales.

The newspapers have been full of World Cup previews. A couple of interesting facts stood out. The West Indies are considered the youngest squad in the competition yet their squad boasts 550 ODI caps more than England. Apparently we are the least experienced in terms of ODI caps of all the major nations with just 622 ODI appearances. Sri Lanka have seven players with more than 165 appearances each!

Simon Wilde in the Sunday Times wrote an article about how important the last ten overs of an innings have become. In recent times there have been a number of occasions when teams have scored over 100 runs from the last ten overs but what is the norm? The article compared the runs conceded by the major eight nations in the last ten overs over the last year. The West Indies were the most economical conceding just 5.85 runs per over during the last ten whilst New Zealand were the most profligate at 6.68 runs per over. Believe it or not, given our record over the last year, England were the second meanest at 6.21 runs per over. On this basis, beating New Zealand on Friday should be a stroll!!

Over the last year, we have received a number of brochures at the Club advertising yachts for hire - and I mean luxury yachts - in the Caribbean during the World Cup. Given the travel logistics of the Caribbean, hiring a yacht would undoubtably be the best way to watch the World Cup if you could afford it! The most expensive was a 36 berth luxury yacht available at the price of $US800,000 per week. This did include a crew of 50 but did not include flights, food, drink or tickets.

One of the best villas in Barbados with 20 bedrooms and 20,000 sg ft of living space is reported as possibly being available at £95,000 per week including 20 staff but not including food, drink or tips! The owner is accepting 'offers' for a month's lease from 9th April.

The tournament starts on Tuesday and England play their first game on Friday so no phone calls please after 1-30pm! Not only will we be watching England's progress closely but we will also look forward to seeing how Alexei Kervezee performs for the Netherlands and also some of our recent overseas players including Lou Vincent, Zaheer Khan, Andrew Hall, Justin Kemp and Chris Gayle. Whatever happened to Shoaib?