Gloomy days, these, for English cricket. 'On February 7th the England Test (international) side was skittled out for 51 runs, its third-lowest total in 132 years and 880 matches, as it slid to ignominious defeat against the West Indies, one of the lowest-ranked Test sides in the world.rnEngland may be useless, but they're not worthless. The previous day, some of the players were auctioned-that's right, by a man with a gavel-for the second season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), a six-week tournament of short matches (lasting around three-and-a-half hours each) which begins in April. The services of England's two great crowd-pleasers, Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen (pictured above), fetched $1.55m apiece. A third member of the team scooped $275,000. For cricketers, these are huge sums-and the top price has gone up since last year.
展开▼
