Result!

Someone I know who works in conjunction with an institution here in the UK has just given me a load of cricket stuff. A set of the blue Kwik cricket stumps, 4 or 5 Kwik cricket bats and two spring back stumps. I almost bought some of the blue Kwik cricket type stumps a while back and was horrified that they were so expensive. The reason I've been donated this equipment is that it was thrown out by the institution, yet there is nothing wrong with it and this is in the wake of an Ashes series that we've just won further reinforcing my recent point that the majority of the world have been disenfranchised by the exclusive SKY coverage. Incidentally there was an article in the Guardian to this affect http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2009/aug/25/cricket-england-cricket-team which concurs with my assessment of the whole SKY debacle. But why has the gear been chucked out? It might be that they were expecting a big up-turn in enthusiastic kids wanting to play cricket and needless to say what with the coverage the Ashes has had this year that's now not going to happen? More realistically it's to do with the fact that institutions get set budgets which they must spend or they're capped, which simply means in order to buy stuff they therefore need to chuck away their slightly old stuff and this time round I've ended up the beneficiary which is nice.