I thought I'd do a post that wasn't about cricket finances: The next world cup is in India 2023 (Shall we go?  I think we should go, I'm going.) And this is my uninformed selection for the stars of 2023.  As no imaginary selection exercise is complete without a raft of bizarre self - imposed rules, I've kept myself to players under 25 years of age (25 years of age now not 2023). So drum roll, please Number 1 Prithvi Shaw: India, Age 19. Embed from Getty Images I saw Shaw bat in an U19 ODI against England and got the tingle I used to get when something really good came on the John Peel show, a feeling I was in right at the start of something. OK I accept I might have been getting onto a bandwaggon a couple of hundred million Indians were already on but I'm not getting off now. Go Prithvi.   Number 2 Rishabh Pant: India, Age 21 Wicket Keepe r Embed from Getty Images Was tempted by Aiden Markham but I reckon first 10 overs will be a good time...

Durham is the baby of the 18 first class counties , admitted to the County Championship in 1992.  Before Durham came Glamorgan who gained first class status in 1921.  Northamptonshire (1905) were the only other county to join the championship in the twentieth century, all of the other counties were playing in the county championship prior to 1900. English domestic cricket is a remarkably stable affair with no county having become insolvent or gone into administration.  Remarkably this stability has been achieved against a background of a hundred years plus of financial crisis.  Pictures of crowds flocking to Lord's in the aftermath of World War Two are misleading.  As I found out whilst researching my book A War To The Knife small crowds, unbalanced budgets and reliance on distributions from Test cricket have long been a fact of life for many counties. The 1933 spring edition of The Cricketer commented: “It is satisfactory to find that in spite of adve...