The BBC Sports Personality of the Year shortlist has been announced and both Strauss and Cook are in the running for the award. I’m hoping one of them wins, of course. I’m leaning toward Cook, he had the better year on the field. (Though since it’s the sports personality award I fail to see how Graeme Swann, or at least Jimmy Anderson, doesn’t win every single year. It should at least go to someone with a Twitter account.) The full list is on the BBC website. It’s been noted that it is not a particularly diverse list, there are no women on it at all this year. There also aren’t any footballers or rugby players in the running, though that’s less surprising given the state of the national teams.
There is also an award for team of the year, which must surely either go to the England cricket team or to Lancashire. I’d give it to Lancs. We all knew England were good at the start of the year, if not that they were so good as to beat India 4-0. No one expected Lancashire to win the County Championship though; some even predicted we would be relegated! We had a team comprised almost entirely of homegrown talent, mostly very young and inexperienced. Lancashire were a team in that they were greater than the sum of their parts this year. To an extent this was also true of England, but the national side had the services of the second best fast bowler in the world a lot more often than the Red Rose. I think Lancashire are clearly the most deserving team.
Defensive Indifference 