What a beautiful place to to some training

Our final training session before tomorrow's opener against Estonia.

After the hard graft of the swimming pool it was off to Corfu town centre for a match at one of the most beautiful grounds in the Mediterranean. With the old fortress on one side, the sea itself just a few hundred yards away and hemmed in by the wonderful historic buildings of the old town.

We also had quite a crowd watching as one side of the ground is lined with cafes full of locals and tourists wondering what the hell are the Turkish team doing.

Coach Raj put us through our paces and set out some basics for us to remember. So that's it. An early night for us.


View Larger MapWhere we practiced today. For a better view, ignore the A and zoom in, look for the ceicket pitch to the left of the big fortress that juts into the sea.

But in the meantime this piece is from the book "Cricket" written by AG Steel who scored a century at Lord's against the Australians in 1884.

The necessity of moderation in drink is happily a thing few cricketers need to be reminded of. There are many opinions as to what is the best drink for men when actually playing. By best we mean that which does least harm to the eye. In hot weather something must be drunk, the question is what? Our experience is that beer and stout are both too heady and heavy, gin and ginger beer are too sticky and sweet to the palate, ouzo is alright if playing in Corfu. In our opinion, shandy-gaff, sherry, or claret and soda are the most thirst-quenching, the lightest and the cleanest to the palate. In a long innings the heat and dust are apt to make the mouth very dry and parched and a clean drink is especially desirable.

So I guess we had better get some ouzo in.

This extract was taken from Angus Bell's "Batting on the Bosphorus" from which he found the above passage from the website of the Estonian cricket web page.