Very little to report this week because of half-term. With any luck and some half-decent weather there is a chance that schools will finally be able to play a fair amount of cricket. Teacher Assessed Grades are now complete and so SLTs presumably will be less fearful of disruption from any possibility of a Covid outbreak. The National T20 certainly needs an injection of urgency in some quarters as a few regions are way behind where they normally are in the competition. With Finals day less than three weeks away, the North and the West are near to having a team for Arundel but one part of the South and much of the East and West Midlands still have several rounds to play.
Those who follow this column will be aware that I have often banged on about over rates. Apparently in some major leagues there are penalties built into the game (as there are for our T20 competition) if teams fail to complete a set number of overs: 17 per hour for declaration games and 16 for overs matches (because there are more wides). So it was depressing to see the England side set such a lamentable example in this respect, tottering along at about 13 per hour. With a whole day lost to rain it made no sense to have missed 21 overs over the first three days and only an excellent (and refreshingly unusual) declaration by New Zealand created any chance of a result.
Results
High School of Glasgow 95-7 (20 overs),*Glasgow Academy 69