The 'A' team concept

Dylan Cleaver had a really interesting piece in yesterday's Herald on Sunday looking at the concept of 'A' team tours and the pros and cons of funding these instead of improving the structure of the domestic game. In the same paper on the same day Mark Richardson has penned a piece which states that the high performance centre at Lincoln should be a higher funding priority than 'A' tours on the grounds that:

Our top-order batsmen, in particular, have technical issues which can only be fixed in a controlled environment.

For many, match play should only come at the end of an extensive skills development process.

It would disappoint me to see some of our best players playing meaningless cricket at the expense of overhauling their techniques