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TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2001 With the CricInfo season starting to wind down, some teams still have much to play for with only a few games left. In Divison One, it looks very likely that Yorkshire are going to win the competition for the first time for many years. No doubt my good friend Darren Lehmann ('Boof') is having a great time; he has had a fantastic season scoring loads of runs and has been the backbone to their success. Also, his wife Andrea is expecting twins so it's an exciting time for him: well done mate - you deserve it. By contrast, the teams at the bottom of the table are trying to scramble every run and wicket for those vital bonus points in order to escape relegation into the second division. In the second division, teams are doing the same scrambling for those three top spots. For us, the win against Hampshire has given us a little bit of hope, but I think we need a miracle if we're going to go up this season. The two divisions are a great idea because, with only a few games left, nearly everyone is still involved at the end of the season - which is good for the game itself. In the past, a season could have slipped by very quickly and teams could have been out of the competition at the halfway point, making things potentially a little boring. Although there has been some talk that administrators should change the rules to ensure that only two teams go up and two down, I believe that the competition the way it is now should remain. One good idea might be something like having the team that finishes third last in Division One play against the team that finished third in Division Two. Easy to say, but how does it all work? Maybe someone will come up with a better idea. Meanwhile, Australia finished off an excellent tour of England with a convincing win in the fifth and final Test. Those two champions that we have - and have had for many years - with the ball in Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath have done it again. A brilliant series from both men and it really showed in the last Test once again when Australia needed them both to do something special and they did. England have also shown me again that it is harder to defend something than actually go out and win it. Something Australia have done for many years now. They get the opposition teams into a position they don't want be in and keep pressing hard until something breaks and then they really press home their advantage. They seem to do it so easily sometimes but like I've said before, it makes things a lot easier when a team has quality players such as these guys. Steve Waugh was again inspirational with his 150-odd as was Mark Waugh. I have to say 'well done lads'; it's great to be an Aussie in England at the moment. Well, an Aussie any time for that matter! I think the one thing this series has done is to have given England a benchmark. There is no doubt I am delighted by the way we play our cricket in Australia and proud of it. The talk this week here has been about the England team that has been picked for India and New Zealand. Darren Gough and Alec Stewart will no doubt have their reasons for not going on these tours and they are in both cases probably very valid sets of excuses. However, the idea of picking and choosing tours as a player is hard for me to think about, probably because I don't believe it would happen in the Australian team. Well, I'd like to think that it wouldn't anyway. As a cricketer, I think of some of the more difficult tours as more of a challenge, something you want to tackle head on. Ok, India is not the easiest place to tour - or so I've been told - primarily because it's very, very, very hot. From what I've seen on television of Australia's recent tour of India, the wickets were also very flat. But apparently the overall conditions have improved as have the hotels and there is good quality food available to you. In my opinion you can only play this game for so long, so I hope they don't look back and say to themselves later I wish I went on that tour. As I write, we've just finished another one-day game - well, actually, we didn't finish it as such because the rain finished it for us. After that result, it leaves Glamorgan the favourite to win our division of the National League. They're on top with 44 points, Durham have 38, and we have 36. Hampshire - on 34 - are the only other team that look likely to cause a threat. Durham have one game remaining, and the rest of us have two games. So it's all set for a very interesting finish in terms of which of the aforementioned teams will win the right to move up a division. Until that's all resolved, I'll see you later. Andy Bichel
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