Even by our knee-high standards Rikki Clarke’s selection as ‘one to watch’ has been ill-judged.

He has been worth watching in a faintly soap opera kind of way, we suppose. It’s one thing to play badly (in the second division), it’s another to resign the captaincy, but it’s really going some to drop yourself - which is what Rikki did at one point this season.

We’ll discard him for next season and he’ll turn into Don Bradman and Waqar Younis’s bastard offspring, just you watch.

Tags: Rikki Clarke, county cricket by King Cricket
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Don’t laugh. We’ll admit it is a bit counter-intuitive, but we’re intrigued.

Rikki Clarke was picked for England at a young age and while he didn’t disgrace himself, his bowling clearly wasn’t international standard, so he’s something of a figure of fun. Last year, both his batting and bowling aspired to ‘not quite international standard’ as he wallowed in underachievement at Surrey.

So, the obvious solution was for Rikki Clarke to go and take the Derbyshire captaincy. Is it change just for the sake of it? Who knows? Let’s watch and find out.

And if nothing does happen, let’s quietly edit the website that there’s no mention of Rikki Clarke being One To Watch and pretend that none of this happened.

Other players to watch in 2008.

Tags: Darrell Hair, Rikki Clarke, county cricket, ones to watch by King Cricket
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In the county cricket club fashion stakes, Derbyshire languish somewhere near the bottom. Whenever anyone needs to depict the mundane, life’s-going-on-elsewhere nature of early-season County Championship matches, they always pick on Derbyshire.

That’s unfair in much the same way as ‘it rains in Manchester’ jibes are. The whole bloody island’s wet. And as far as playing at Derby in May’s concerned, all early-season County Championship matches are as maudlin as off-season Sundays in Redcar.

It’s like comparing The Cheeky Girls’ respective appearances. Consider the bigger picture. They’re both incredibly close together; way, way down near the bottom of the hierarchy, in the section marked ‘faces like busted frogs’.

Anyway, we’re still slightly surprised that Rikki Clarke’s leaving Surrey for Derbyshire. If there were a trendy county - and there isn’t - it’d be Surrey (or maybe Hampshire) and as we said, Derbyshire are, er, not cool.

Rikki’s going to be captain though. He doubtless thinks it’ll help his England chances in the same way that it helped Rob Key’s. Eh? Oh.

Tags: Rikki Clarke, county cricket by King Cricket
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