By Edward Hall
June 23 2002

Games do not come much bigger than this. A Wales team, bolstered by the return of Jacques Kallis to Sophia Gardens, will take on the full England one-day team preparing for their set of one-day internationals against India and Sri Lanka. While the game does not even have full one-day international status, and it will go down in the record books as a warm up game tagged onto the international calendar, it will mean a lot more than that for the 22 players who come out tomorrow at 10.45. The identity of the 22 players is not yet known. Both teams will be selected from small squads, but England may not field a first choice XI, instead opting to give match practice to players like Paul Collingwood and James Kirtley. Nasser Hussain will certainly not play and Nick Knight may also be left out, after playing in the Benson and Hedges Cup Final on Saturday.

The Wales squad has been whittled down to 14. 11 Glamorgan players are joined by Tony Cottey, Steffen Jones and Jacques Kallis, who will be the key performer, probably batting at his usual number 3 spot, and bowling a full allocation of 10 overs. Wales will certainly look to their experienced one-day performers, Robert Croft and Matt Maynard, to do some of the damage with the bat. Croft will be looking to outshine the two spinners in England’s party, Ashley Giles and Jeremy Snape, as this time last year, Croft was still in the international picture with England’s one-day squad. He will be hoping to prove the selectors wrong, by being given the responsibility of opening the batting instead of batting lower down the order, where he did when playing for England.

It is likely that Croft will open with David Hemp, following his century in the defeat last week against Surrey. The batting looks strong, with Kallis at 3 and Maynard at 4. Steve James, captain of the Wales side, will probably look to bat as high up the order as possible, but with Kallis and Maynard present, may find himself at 5. Adrian Dale and Michael Powell will probably fill in the last two batting spots, with Tony Cottey the man to miss out. Somerset’s Steffan Jones is more likely to feature in the game, alongside Darren Thomas, Simon Jones and Andrew Davies.

Hopefully, the Wales team will be strong enough, and by giving Maynard the gloves, opening the batting with Croft and unleashing Simon Jones on the English, can show the England team what they have been missing.


Wales squad: Steve James, Robert Croft, David Hemp, Jacques Kallis, Matthew Maynard, Mike Powell, Tony Cottey, Adrian Dale, Darren Thomas, Steffan Jones, Andrew Davies, Dean Cosker, Simon Jones and Mark Wallace

England squad: Nick Knight, Marcus Trescothick, Michael Vaughan, Graeme Thorpe, Paul Collingwood, Andy Flintoff, Ronnie Irani, Ashley Giles, James Kirtley, Jeremy Snape, Alec Stewart, Alex Tudor and Matthew Hoggard.

Prediction: A decent all round performance from Jacques Kallis means a fairly tight game, but the English batting to be too strong

TV Coverage: If you cannot be at the ground, the whole match is being shown live on S4C