England vs Pakistan starts this week

This Friday starts the long anticipated tour of England being in the United Arab Emirates to play both Pakistan and then Bangladesh. The first game between the senior sides is this Friday with the first 20/20 international between Pakistan and England although the England Lions and Pakistan A team have already played a few games and have a couple more this week.

So far the England lions have been firmly on top beating Pakistan A in both of their 20/20 matches relatively comfortable and it has been very good to see some of the lads doing really well and pushing for either a call up or a return to the full side. People such as Ian Bell who has yet to get a bad score on the tour, Craig Kieswetter has been in good form and should earn a place in the squad for the Twenty/20 World Cup, Adil Rashid has been bowling well and Peter Trego has been batting and bowling consistently.

Elsewhere the Test Match Series between India and South Africa is still going on and the second test was noticeable for a batting collapse that could rival any that England have done previously when they went from 251-3 to collapse to 296 all out in the space of 25 overs after tea on the first day after centuries by Petersen (on debut) and Amla had them going well. In reply India started strongly and never looked back with no fewer than 4 players making hundreds (Sehwag, Tendulkar, Dhoni and Laxman).

There was also a fantastic game of One Day International Cricket between Australia and West Indies the other day where both sides showed exactly what they are capable of. Batting first Australia made a good score of 324 and for a while it looked as if West Indies were going to get nowhere near the total but some good hitting managed to get them to a respectable total of 274 which is an improvement on the rest of the series so far.

So with cricket being played almost all around the world at the moment there's so much action it really is brilliant and gives me more to watch and write about.