David Lloyd looks ahead to the T20 Blast Roses clash live on Sky Sports 2 at 6pm, Friday...
Sunday 5 June 2016 14:20, UK
David Lloyd looks ahead to the Roses rivalry clash in the Blast, talks T20's future, reflects on England's second Test win over Sri Lanka, and stars in an advert...
It'd be terrific if we could reignite that really fierce Roses rivalry.
We're close to it now because both sides have very, very good players. Lancashire have yo-yo'd from the first division to second division but it's also not long ago that they won the County Championship, and they won the T20 Blast last year. Then there's the current county champs, Yorkshire - a fabulous club.
The two meet in the Blast at Old Trafford on Friday night, with both having played two, lost two. That is a nightmare start, so one of them is going to be very disappointed if it's three defeats in three.
It's almost like Manchester City versus Manchester United in football. That attitude of 'I'm not bothered if we lose every game as long as we beat that lot'.
The game last year is very fresh in my memory, and likely anyone who was there. Aaron Finch's two sixes that hit the top of the Point were ridiculous!
Nobody can hit it that far, and he hit two enormous shots in a row. So it's no accident that this game was sold out last week. There are blokes on social media asking me for tickets.
I've been getting a bit of stick off the Yorkies on twitter too this past week as we had some fun on commentary during the second England Test, mentioning Yorkshire were 14-3 early in the Roses match in the Championship.
A few just didn't get it, that it was all great fun and tongue in cheek! And Yorkshire just showed their resilience coming back from that to get over 300 and ultimately win.
They've got such depth. They can perform like that even without Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow - although the two England lads will be back for Friday's big Blast game.
Colin Graves said last week it was a mediocre competition. I know exactly what he meant but it has not been well received.
This Roses game in isolation will have some world class players on both sides, but what Graves is getting at is the competition as a whole - being spread over the whole season - sometimes playing on a Thursday, sometimes a Saturday, sometimes a day game, sometimes at night. That is no good.
If we had a designated five-week period for T20, we would attract the best players in the world and that would enhance the competition - that's what he was saying. The Blast is a very good competition, it puts bums on seats, but it could be much better.
With the debate on T20 cricket, we should never lose sight of the fact that Test cricket is the pinnacle though.
These T20 competitions are great fun with players like Chris Gayle and Kieron Pollard - they're like Harlem Globetrotters. But while they are brilliant at what they do, they won't have the longevity of a great Test player. One of the best we've ever seen in one-day cricket is Michael Bevan and he never gets a mention anywhere.
It's Test cricket. The clue is in the name. It's a massive test over five days in different conditions and different atmospheres on different pitches and it's what a cricketer should be judged on.
Up in Durham for the England Test, Jimmy Anderson was fantastic, again. It was a wonderful performance from all of England's bowlers to bundle Sri Lanka out for 101 in the first innings on an unbelievably slow pitch, which was understandable because the groundsman couldn't prepare it as they'd have liked, thanks to the bad weather.
Sri Lanka got stuck in in their second innings and I thought they played pretty well. It's unfair to say this is the worst team that's ever come to England. They've got some decent bowlers and two batsmen in the middle-order in Dinesh Chandial and Angelo Mathews who both average in the high 40s in Test cricket,
They've just played in very difficult conditions. It's exactly the same when England go to Colombo and it's 40 degrees and 90 per cent humidity.
Also this week, I've been filming an advert in London at a cricket club, I'm not saying which one, but the ad includes Eoin Morgan, Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow, and will be coming to your screens at the back end of June. It was an absolute hoot, the best I've ever done!
I'm also going to appear in a Sunday newspaper's magazine, which will be fun for me. They want me to talk about my prize possessions so I've dug out my Fast Show DVDs and Rolling Stones albums.
There's also my cricket bat that I got 200 with against India and my tweed suit that I go racing in on my motorbike. Keep an eye out for that too in the coming weeks.
