Women's World Cup

Yes, but nothing but cheerleading from the overdose of commentators. Great for England, but in terms of a competitive start, a total non event. Is the standard really high enough to allow 12 teams? Doesn't look like it. It can't get any worse than that, surely?

The standard is not great, although it has certainly improved over the years.

However some sides are totally out of their depth for sure.

But that won't stop the BBC shoving it down our throats and bigging it up , no doubt calling for Damehoods for the England side if they emerge victorious.

It's on Sky.

I know that.

But it's getting a lot of coverage on Five Live, news bulletins and the BBC website.

I watched a lot of the women's Ashes test a few years ago; Ecclestone was very good and the two Aussie spinners were excellent. I'll refrain from passing comment on the Sri Lankan bowlers except to say I would have fancied a bat !

Watching Scotland vs NZ this morning. Poor dismissal for McCol but as she walked off, I was thinking what a lonely and demoralising thing it must be to have to walk all the way back to the Pavilion with thousands of disapproving eyes watching.

The only way that standards can improve is by exposing lower ranked sides to the best. Many people could not see the point of having Durham in the County Champs or Italy in the 6 nations Rugby but they are steadily improving. Durham now one of the best county teams. Some no hope teams in the Football World Cup but few of them have given up more than 5 goals so far. Meanwhile Darcy Carter is now the leading run scorer of the entire tournament.

Sage, continually being hammered by much better teams does nobody any favours. Look at San Marino, Andorra and co in football for instance , no improvement in results after many years because they just don't have the players.

As far as Durham goes, they were one of the best Minor counties for many years and it had long been mooted that they could compete at county level. It was always going to take a few years for them to fully grow in to the First Class environment, in the early years they relied on a number of ex pros from other counties who had seen better days (Botham at the end of his career for instance, Graham Fowler, Jonathan Lewis, Wayne Larkins etc) and in the early 2000s they took advantage of the Kolpak ruling to have a number of overseas players. Together with bringing through home grown talent like Harmison, Brown, Collingwood etc this laid the foundations to their more recent success (mind you they are back in Division Two now alongside my county  .

Durham's fairly rapid rise in the County game is a totally different scenario to more minor national teams getting thrashed in World Cups, Durham were able to bring in players from elsewhere, it goes without saying that you can't actually do that so easily at international level can you ?