That was a smashing piece Yer Maj. England’s selectors have always given plenty of misfits to chew over but that was a nicely chosen subset of them.

On the subject of the 1986 ICC Trophy (the qualifier for the 1987 World Cup), Christian Rocca made his debut for Gibraltar in that tournament. A couple of weeks ago he batted for Gibraltar in a T20I against Romania, scoring 14 from 19. At the age of 57, this makes him the third oldest player to have played a T20I. I hope this makes some readers of this site feel a bit younger.

One of the players on the other side in that match was Marian Gherasim, a Romanian teenager who is the youngest T20I player, having made his debut at the age of 14 years and 16 days against Bulgaria in 2020. I fear this may make some readers now feel a good deal older…

https://www.cricketeurope.com/DATABASE/ARTICLES2022/articles/000005/000525.shtml

We remember him.

https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/englands-four-weirdest-test-picks-of-the-last-20-years/2020/06/07/

Sporting an excellent top-knot which makes it worth the watch even if you don’t care about tense finishes at this level of cricket. Definitely not the same thing as dismissing Ramnaresh Sarwan on Test debut / in your final Test (same thing, sadly).

Also I fear Finland is a big step down from when Denmark used to play in the county one-day cup, though to be fair they did usually get thrashed. They used to be competitive in World Cup qualifying too, beating Bangladesh en route to the semi-finals in 1979 and 1986, and almost pulling it off in 1990: in their final 2nd stage league match, knowing the winner would progress to the semi-finals, Denmark set 233/9, and Bangladesh won by 3 wickets with 2 balls remaining. (For fans of obscure cricket personalities, that match saw Derbyshire’s Ole Mortensen face off against the “senior” Enamul Haque.)

Since the start of 2019, when the ICC gave T20I status to associate members, Denmark have lost matches against Jersey, Germany, Guernsey, Sweden, Italy and Finland. In other matches they have managed to beat Sweden, Italy, Finland and Norway, but nobody else. Not quite sure what lesson to draw from this, but lower level associate cricket in Europe does seem rather “flatter” and less hierarchical than it used to be – quite a few countries have a couple of dozen clubs, which seems to be all it takes to assemble a competitive team.

Well, we couldn’t help it.

Aaaah! (in an epiphanic tone)

…and agreed, thereby giving more credence that what you wrote is true.

Well here’s another nice mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

As we’ve said before, it’s the new Graham/Graeme cricket shibboleth.

Definitely think it’s the Olympus, Oligarch, Olfactory colourful naming phenomenon and don’t even need to look into it properly to know that this is definitely the best explanation and therefore true.

Are they a shortened form of the same first name (Oliver), a result of the parochial nature of cricket selection, or is it akin to the cricketer’s fashion of sticking a ‘y’ on everyone’s surname and covers a variety of first names such Olivia, Olympus, Olliphant, etc., or are Olly and Ollie now legit first names?

I need to know this.