Where's Our Jonathan Agnew To Ask The Difficult Questions?

Something's up with Hol-Col... but we don't know what!

Holly Colvin - England's most reliable bowler over recent years - was not included in the team for the Ashes Test which begins tomorrow... and nobody seems to know why!

Retired Southern Star Lisa Sthalekar, blogging for Cricket Australia, hints at a possible explanation:

There has been a suggestion that [Colvin] may be suffering from the ‘yips’...

But the truth is that we don't know... and we are probably not going to find out any time soon!

This segues into something that has been bugging me since the World Cup in India: that while there are reporters covering women's cricket, 99% of them are too close to the team to ask any difficult questions - they see their role as supporting the game and the England team; and acting as cheerleaders, rather than quizzical "journalists".

Women's cricket lacks a Jonathan Agnew - an authoritative figure who can't be ignored (unlike us bloggers) and who is not afraid to prod and probe around-about off-stump, moving the ball one way and then the other, asking tough questions and then following them up intelligently.

(And the brilliant thing about Agnew is that he does this so cleverly and subtly, that a lot of people assume he is a bit of a soft-touch buffoon - when in reality he is nothing of the sort - and he ends up getting the answers no one else can!)

Women's cricket is at a bit of a junction; and it does need an element of cheerleading in the press to drum-up support for the team and the game.

But sometimes I just wish they'd ask the odd difficult question too!