1st Day Of The New Season And didn't Lancashire look crap ? Apart from some tight bowling by perennial injury worry Flintoff their bowlers were fairly easy pickings as Mark "Why can't he do that for England ?" Ramprakash and Mark "Why can't he do that for England ?" Butcher both ran up easy tons in the first innings. Over the border, Yorkshire performed fairly well although Michael "Why do England Captains always bat like that ?" Vaughaun managed a duck when facing the might of the combined Leeds/Bradford Univercities team. Still, 500 allout isn't a bad effort. Kruis is looking on good form with the ball. Tomorrow of course the IPL kicks off, some of the franchise teams in the Indian Premier League were sold for almost $120million. The amount of money washing around in Indian cricket is staggering, as is Sachin Tendulkar's wage packet which is reputed to be in the region of $20million, Premiership footballers might feel poor by comparison. Whether or not you think that the IPL is damamging cricket in other countries, and possibly doing irreperable damage to the one day as well, the line of players that has been assembled by the super rich league is truly mouthwatering. Mark Boucher (BRC) Shivnarine Chanderpaul (BRC) M S Dhoni (CSK) Rahul Dravid (BRC) Adam Gilchrist (DC) Matt Hayden (CSK) Jacques Kallis (BRC) Brett Lee (K11P) Shaoib Malik (DDD) Mattiah Murilitheran (CSK) Ricky Ponting (KKR) Kumar Sangakarra (K11P) Virender Sehwag (DD) Ishant Sharma (KKR) Harbajan Singh (MI) Yuvraj Singh (K11P) Grahem Smith (RR) Andrew Symonds (DC) Sachin Tendulkar (MI) Daniel Vettori (DDD) Shane Warne (RR) It's like a whose who of the current best, and perhaps ever so slightly just past their best, or world cricket. There are no English players of course because our season has just begun, apart from Dimitri Mascerenas who hasn't been awarded a central contract from the ECB and thus isn't putting his future England career (if he has one) at risk. Over in the UK, won't be able to watch the IPL unless you are willing to fork out another £10 a month, on top of your Sky subscription, to the Setenta Sports channel. The line up look so good though, I could almost be tempted.