It was a mixed day for England hopefuls on the first full day of the County Championship season, with Ravi Bopara coming a distant second best to Sam Northeast at Chelmsford.
I was impressed to hear that Bopara had turned down a £100,000 IPL contract to concentrate on playing for Essex in an attempt to get his England test place back.
Eoin Morgan has gone to the IPL, it is widely expected that Morgan is next in line for a test spot with Paul Collingwood’s place becoming available.
So why has Ravi decided to stay at Essex instead of going to India? Especially if Morgan is going to get the vacant test spot.
Well, maybe Ravi has had a wink and a nudge, possibly from Graham Gooch? Either it is a very brave call, or he knows something that we don’t.
It could be that someone has told Ravi that the test place is far from secured for Morgan.
Anyway, things couldn’t have gone much worse for Ravi today with him getting a 16 ball duck.
This came after Kent youngster Sam Northeast had scored a century. It wasn’t just the 112 runs Northeast scored that was impressive, it was the fact that he scored them on a pitch that seen 16 wickets fall on the day.
It was also a massive 88 runs more than any other player managed on the day, with no other player making it past 24 and just the 2 batsmen passing 20.
If anyone from England had come to see Ravi play, they would have left Chelmsford with another name to throw into the hat.
The only good thing to happen for Ravi today, was the fact that Morgan could only manage 6 runs in the opening IPL match.
Morgan was unable to get his Kolkata Knight Riders across the line as they lost to Chennai Super Kings. They needed 42 runs from 28 balls when Morgan came into bat, far from an impossible task by his high standards.
England Watch Scoreboard – Ravi 0, Morgan 0.
