We're on a roll, we beat Oldham CC who set a target of 280, by 6 wickets with Adu getting 126 and Cooper 81 not out. Only bad thing was Wright went for loads and Beattie bagged a golden. However, we're one win away form the top four.

Great stuff from the lads and CECC find themselves rapidly improving. Adu has improved to 'proficient' batting this week and mediocre consistency and concentration and then bags his first century. Cooper's 3rd in the league batting averages and Antoine's miserly bowling continues to cause problems for the opposition. Fantastic!

Adu has two centuries Andy, in four games I think! Cooper's not-outs have indeed helped his average up to a nice 89!

We lost to Scotland (255/3) by seven runs (248/7). Beattie and Cooper both socred fifties and Skalding took 2-40 though.

We just spanked crt. We scored 370 - 2 with Adu scoring a massive 195 off 154 balls and Rajesh and Rob Cooper both scoring 50s. CRT were all out for 134 with Antoine the pick of the bowlers with 4 wickets for only 3 runs!

The problem is Andy we are losing to the teams just above us...crt are a poor side but we did do well to beat them so convincingly. We'll need to be more consistent next season to have any chance of going up.

Do you think that after this latest youth pull we should cancel the academy for the rest of the season? We're slipping further into the red and there has been little produced in the way of youth lately.

I just noticed though, Adu's score is the top score in the league by the small matter of 42 runs!

These are the exact 2 problems that I see. We did beat 2 teams above us near the halfway point - Oldham and Borobia I think - but we shouldn't be losing to Dave Mohammad XI or the ramblers, but we've lost to both of them once. When our top order fires, we beat teams convincingly, but our top order does seem prone to collapse. Have a look at the last friendly we played. We weren't much worse as a team, but we got thumped as our top order folded. I'm wondering if we need a 'plug' at number 3 who can do a Kallis and hold the team together.

The other problem is funds - we seem to be haemorraging money like its going out of fashion - despite having decent gates for home games. I reckon we may need to sell a player or two before we go bust. Some of our players must be worth a good sum though. What do you reckon?

Selling players won't make anywhere near the financial impact that scrapping the youth academy would. £20,000 a week is big money and we need to recover it. I suggest cancelling the investment immediately then reviewing it at the end of the season.

The youth team is scrapped. We managed to get a couple of half decent players out of it before it hit the dust though in Chikosi and Heskey. A decent bit of backup, which might even make us a few squid.

Yeah, I like Heskey especially. Maybe worth giving him some batting nets next year as well as improving his keeping. Who would you want to transfer list Andy, and at what prices?