I'd bet a fair wedge of my hard-earned cash that the cricketers invited would be on the first plane to Lahore. Sadly Pakistan is only hosting the ICC Champions Trophy, a competition where national pride is at stake rather than millions of dollars.

That makes it much easier for the greedy to chicken out on security grounds even though Al Qaeda and any other terrorist organisation for that matter has shown little interest in disrupting cricket. I doubt whether Osama Bin Laden has heard of Kevin Pietersen.

Naturally when money and alleged safety concerns are being discussed it's Pietersen, a man who has enriched himself by transferring his national identity, who shows up as England spokesman.

Pietersen, who sulked when England refused to let him play in the cash-laden IPL Twenty/20, doesn't think he'll be travelling to Pakistan, presumably because he believes his ego would be under threat of kidnap.

Good, maybe he will spend the time saved practising how to build an innings rather than just show off at the crease. He couldn't have been any more irresponsible in the last Test.


I CAN'T deny that the Twenty/20 final was a superb sporting occasion. A thrilling contest that went right down to the wire before Middlesex triumphed over Kent.

But as a test of international quality, it couldn't have been more irrelevant. Naturally the heroes of this season's domestic competition have been touted as England players for the next international staging of the event, but Graham Napier might find slogging Brett Lee a bit harder than he does the trundlers who dominate the county scene in England.

Incredibly even Dawid Malan, a South African who found it hard to reach 20 when playing for Peterborough Town the other season, has also been put forward as an international player on the back of one biffed ton.

If he ever plays for England they should demolish the first-class set-up in this country with it's ludicrous use of Kolpak qualified players and create something that actually works in the national side's interest.