4th and final test...

So England wrapped up a convincing three nil test series win over the West Indies, and its now on to the one day series. This test match was always going to be a case of after the Lord Mayor's show, the series was already over, and with the first day a wash out, and not much possible on the 2nd, you would have been forgiven for thinking this game would drag on to an inevitable draw. In the end though, the final day was quite exciting. England again cleaned up the West Indies tail, with the only real resistance coming from Gayle (who at last scored some runs), Chanderpaul (the man who for the third time in his career, went over 1000 minutes between being dismissed in a series), and Dwayne Bravo (the West Indies most promising player). Other than that, the West Indies collapsed in mediocre style again, with England using this series as a way to bring back some form to players who much needed it. Andrew Strauss at last scored some runs, and Steve Harmison once again looked menacing and took some wickets he deserved to take. Another plus was King Monty taking another 5 for, leading to pundits calling him the world's best finger spinner, or maybe even the world's best spinner, obviously playing international cricket, as Warne is still probably the best! The one thing everyone will ponder about this series is, if the West Indies had had Brian Lara and Ronnie Sarwan available for the whole series, could they have mounted more of a challenge with the bat. Personally, I think the series would have been more competitive, but not necessarily a different result. England are several classes above, and now we move on to the one day series which starts next week with a couple of 20twenty matches...

Who is going to captain England though, and will Vaughan get a place in the side. Collingwood and no and the answers there. Well they should be. If we want Vaughan to play against Aus in 2009, he needs to start resting his body to protect it from further damage. Collingwood is an inspirational cricketer, who I feel would do the job until the next world cup or thereabouts, when Alistair Cook, who for me is the future captain in both forms of the game, could take over and England could look forward to a long and successful era with Cook at the helm. The squad for the up-and-coming one dayers is announced on Friday.

Daren Ganga has not been given the captaincy for the West Indies for the ODIs. That has gone to Chris Gayle, Mr Cool Personified. Let's see if he can rouse these players to put up a challenge!

The other cricket news from today is thatr Durham and Hampshire will meet in the final of the Friends Provident trophy at Lords after knocking out Essex and Warwickshire respectively.