169-3 England get a good start with 2 wickets for a handful of runs. Bairstow managed to cut off a four with a slide on the boundary, then laughed at two team mates that he overtook despite wearing pads
Afridi has agreed to play 50 over cricket for us. So for the next two (I think) games he'll be our overseas player. Then for the remaining four (I think) we'll have the choice between him and McLaren each game.
Made it to the end, but not a fan of using a poor batsman as a night watchman. Finn could have been out a couple of times in one over....then another player would have been risked. There may be no batsmen left by the time Cook plays (if he does). Why did he risk himself like that....captain's job to put some other poor sod in the firing line.
Good...we are winning 2-0 and rather give the fans a chance of further excitement than let it drift to a draw. Even with their new fancy dan scoring system combining test matches with ODis and T20s (3 points for former and 1 point for ODI and T20 wins).
These days I am a big advocate of bowling first in limited overs cricket. Batting has come on so much, that it can be difficult to know what a par score is. The one flaw in the plan is when your bowlers are so utterly awful, that game after game they bowl first, and lose you the match before you have even had a chance to bat. (Of course then falling to 30-3 in the chase every time never helps either).
At least we have some good news - Vince is available for the Surrey game tomorrow and the T20 against Sussex on Friday.
Weather looks substantially better for tomorrow than it did previously. Still looks grim for Friday though. Jimmy managed to get through the first over.
Gareth Andrew might just have saved our season. An 80 run defeat here, and we'd have seriously struggled to pick ourselves up tomorrow - especially when you throw in the travelling, lack of sleep etc. And a defeat tomorrow would probably be competition over, and probably season over. But 342 is a good, good score. Yes it's a defeat, another defeat. But you can't complain at that score. Four men made 50, and Vince and hopefully Wheater will be back tomorrow to no doubt replace two of the men who failed to make 50. And as awful as the bowling is, it's not the team's fault that Wood, Topley and Fidel are all injured. So hopefully the guys can take some heart from that. We just need to go into these games and pray that whichever seamers we play, they somehow take some early wickets. It's the only way we'll ever keep the scores down, and it helps our spinners (who are good) to control the game like you'd expect. Maybe try Tommo over Stevenson tomorrow?
Hampshire 60 - 1 10 overs. BBC Sport (Radio Solent) commentary is working now in case you couldn't get it earlier.
