Four IPL players are competing in today's England v England Lions T20 match in Abu Dhabi. Which one do you reckon did best? No, not Pietersen (26). Nor Collingwood or Morgan, both of whom were dismissed for single-figure scores.
Lumb In fact, it was Michael Lumb, a Hampshire batsman picked up for a snip by Rajasthan Royals, who outscored all three of them combined by making 58 off 35 balls for the so-called second XI.
He retired "hurt" when he got to 40 but came back out for the final three overs as the Lions chased 158 and won, having needed eight off the final two balls.
Lumb's forte seems to be in Twenty20. He got 442 runs in 11 games in last year's Twenty20 Cup and Rajasthan clearly thought he was worth spending £35,000 for this season. Could he go further, though? The World Twenty20 is round the corner and England should select on form.
Another batsman on red-hot form is Craig Kieswetter, the Somerset wicketkeeper who qualified for England last week. He added 100 for the first wicket with Lumb today and went on to make 81 off 66 balls before being out with an over to go.
Like Kieswetter, Lumb was also born in South Africa and so no doubt we can expect more jibes from Down Under if he is elevated into the senior side for the World Twenty20. But hold those attacks: Lumb comes from solid Yorkshire stock.
His father, Richard, made almost 12,000 first-class runs for the county and, by a happy coincidence, opened the batting in the last "England v The Rest" match in 1976, top-scoring in both innings for the fringe-players, who included Mike Brearley, Chris Old and Geoff Miller, as they lost by 127 runs.
It's a great shame that they don't bring back "England v The Rest", although today's match is the same thing effectively. It is such a splendidly eccentric team for a team and allowed sub-editors to have fun after the seniors put the upstarts in their place by writing headlines like "The Rest is silenced".
Although I fear that in the modern world, with the style for making sports teams plural, some editor would change that to "The Rest are silenced" and not get the reference.
The first "England v The Rest" game was in 1911, with The Rest featuring a promising young middle order of Jack Hearne, Frank Woolley and Patsy Hendren, all of whom went on to great things for England.
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