Just over a week ago I read in the JEP: ‘More Twenty/20 games in wake of World Cup qualifier’.

The story was that the Jersey Cricket Board and Guernsey would host six nations each as part of the inaugural ICC European Division I Twenty/20 Championships with the semi-finals and final being played in Jersey sometime next July.

Not surprisingly, the Jersey Cricket Board director of cricket, Chris Minty is delighted and, as a result of the announcement, there will be more Twenty/20 matches played locally, within the NatWest Weekend Cricket League structure.
So why have Jersey and Guernsey been awarded such a prestigious event, with the winners and runners-up progressing to the World Cup Global qualifier in 2012?

Well, some of the reasons are self-evident. First, we have quality pitches and an infrastructure (ease of access between grounds; decent hotels) good enough to satisfy the national sides who will be playing here.

Second, the make-up of the JCB and, in particular, Chris Minty’s drive and vision have brought Jersey cricket so far forward that the ICC no longer view Jersey or Guernsey as little more than the Rutlands of the cricketing world.

Third, the coaching that even the youngest toddler gets, if they are keen to play cricket in either island, is tremendous, compared to the coaching they would have been given a generation ago.

Fourth . . .
But no. Let Mark Latter, chief executive of the Guernsey Cricket Board, who has been instrumental in this joint CI initiative have his say.
‘We (Jersey and Guernsey) know that we have the strongest voice when we talk together,’ he said.

‘Having a Channel Islands League and the Marlborough Inter-Insular Trophy also helps and I look back to when Gary Tapp pushed through a policy of Island cricket first, before clubs; taking the clubs out of the equation by arguing that if they didn’t ratify Island policy, they would be left to their own devices.
‘There are no parochial decisions in island cricket any more. We’re now on an international stage, with Jersey ranked 33 in the world cricket league and Guernsey 35.

‘To put that in perspective, I take great delight in telling my (Scottish) friends that Scotland are ranked 54th in football!

‘Yes, both islands have limitations in size and population but you can get to any ground or hotel within ten minutes and Gatwick’s less than an hour away. In France, by comparison, they spend most of their budget in getting all of their players together from all the different regions – but after that, a brief boat trip from St Malo and they’re here!

‘And the one thing that we can offer, which other countries, with the exception of the home countries and possibly Holland can’t, is grass pitches.

‘The ICC are insisting that for Twenty/20 2011 all games must be played on grass. This immediately takes a country like Italy out of the equation. When they hosted World League V, they did so on matting, with spring loaded stumps. They wouldn’t be allowed to do that for Twenty/20.’

Mark, Chris, and the respective cricketing boards from both islands look to a bigger stage than that of club cricket. Their success has not come overnight but has come on the back of solid foundations dug, initially, a decade ago.

From Jersey’s point of view, the high profile Division V tournament in 2008 when they (80 all out in 39.5 overs) lost to Afghanistan (81 for 8 in 37.4) in the final earned them tremendous respect in the world of cricket. And Afghanistan’s rise through the ranks of senior world cricket has, by association, also stood the Island in good stead. So, I am looking forward to July, and at least one week of sunny weather .

Two weeks ago I was offered the choice of either reporting on a football match or the under-17 hockey inter-insular.

As it has been some time since I’ve trundled up to the all-weather pitch at Les Quennevais I opted for the latter; and I am delighted that I made that choice. For the game had all kinds of drama: comebacks; goalmouth clearances; sin-bins; six goals between two very skilful sides and, at the end, a penalty corner to Guernsey which, when played, saw the ball so tantalizingly close to the net that if a Sarnian had blown at it extremely hard it just might have gone in . . .

Like the rest of the crowd I forgot the cold and the miserable conditions for 80 minutes and just enjoyed the spectacle.

However, I was not impressed early on when Guernsey’s Jack Curran scored the opening goal and immediately rolled across the pitch, inviting his team-mates to embrace him. It is tedious in football so why on earth Curran thought it appropriate in hockey I’ll never know.

However, his manager, Andrew Lindsay, knew how to deal with his goal-scorer’s antics.

‘Any more nonsense like that and you’re off!’ he yelled. I was standing next to him at the time and if steam could come out of your ears when you’re bristling with anger, steam would definitely have come out of Andrew’s, he was that incensed. Meanwhile, Ian Cuming, Jersey’s coach, wanted to share the trophy, six months apiece, after the 3-3 draw, because he said that the idea of the winning team from the year before keeping the trophy in the event of a draw is a nonsense.

Both men, on the day, were right in what they said or did . . .
They are honourable men, and I only wish that more coaches in other sports, would show as much integrity as they did, on a cold and blustery day up at St Brelade.

Meanwhile, at the same time as Jersey were retaining the Deutsche Bank under-17s hockey inter-insular trophy, Jersey were winning the under-21 football Muratti at Springfield.

Obviously I wasn’t there, but I did read Andy Bradshaw’s report afterwards . . . and, after that, talked at different times with two friends who’d been there.
Unprompted, both commented within a minute of my talking to them, how impeccably the youngsters had behaved. ‘A credit to both islands,’ is how it was explained to me.

So I came away from their conversation genuinely delighted that good behaviour on a football pitch merited more comment than the goals scored or, come to that, the result until, 48 hours afterwards, I realised that I’d been drawn into conversation that should never have happened.

For surely an under-21 match – indeed any sporting match – should be played in such a manner and to take delight when someone mentions how well behaved the players were suggests it’s an oddity, rather than the norm.

Ah well; at least all the young spectators at Springfield who saw the game will have gone home without having added any new, four letter words to their vocabulary . . .

At the moment I am trawling through back copies of the JEP, researching the history of athletics in Jersey. (Did you know, for example, that St John’s Athletics Club could attract upwards of 1,500 spectators on a Bank Holiday Monday at the turn of the last century?)

But I digress. For along the way I keep reading other stories, some to do with sport, others not.

There was the headline ‘Jersey rock oldest in the world’, for example, which hinted that, perhaps, there wasn’t much to write about that day . . . before, in 1928, I stumbled over a sports Muratti story when that year’s best player had been . . . but let me return, first, to another side issue: nicknames. I was always ‘Lakey’. Former Chelsea player (and Island manager) Ron Harris was always ‘Chopper’; and in 1950 one of the Muratti stars was ‘Tubby’ White.

So where was I? – Well, in 1928, arguably the best player in the Jersey team was Bardsley. ‘Whopper’ Bardsley.

And so on to two Boycottisms by Island resident Geoffrey Boycott, from this year’s Private Eye annual, ‘Colemanballs’: ‘I’d forgotten how they mentally think’ and, perhaps a little overstated about policing cricketing matches: ‘Normally the Pakistani police have rifles and atomic weapons.’

At the start of this comment piece I spoke about how the coming together of the Jersey and Guernsey cricketing authorities has helped propel Channel Island cricket into national rather than parochial competition. Mark Latter said that it had to happen, because there aren’t enough cricket teams on either island to test the players we have. So more inter-insular cricket, and more competition against bigger countries, is the best way forward.

He hinted that Guernsey football has also woken up to the fact that the best footballers need regular opposition outside of the island, which is something that our own Ricky Weir, president of the JFA, has been striving for in recent months as he aims to guide Jersey towards a small nations competition.

So, just as Mark Latter filled me in with regard to his island’s involvement with cricket outside their bailiwick, so I asked Guernsey Football Association president Mark Le Tissier why he thought that a UK league was the best way forward.

His reply surprised me. For apparently no decision has yet been made and, as he and his committee have ‘an excellent relationship’ with the JFA, he is discounting nothing – for the time being, at least.

Representatives from both Jersey and Guernsey were in London today for a meeting to discuss a ‘little nations’ league or tournament. ‘We are looking at all sorts of options,’ Mark told me. ‘Nothing has been ruled out, although if we do go down the road of a Guernsey team in a national league, that could be decided within the next three weeks, which might also mean we start in a UK league at the start of next season. And the one thing that both islands are in total agreement about, is that our best island players need more and better competition.’

Mark was very candid in his opinions and also said that there was a common footballing bond between the two islands, not least because unlike the rugby, cricket and athletics squads, Channel Islands football might seem to lack direction.
From my perspective, of someone who genuinely wants, regularly, to watch a half-decent match at Springfield between either a Jersey or CI side and a team from outside these local waters, I’m not too fussed – as long as both islands really do pull together and to make a decision that satisfies the supporters (rather than the clubs) of both islands.