Twenty20 Cup Team of the Decade

Forget the IPL, the English Twenty20 Cup is the groundbreaking tournament which spawned the devil just ten years ago. Adam Hollioake's Surrey were the original masters of the format but since then there have been numerous excellent outfits. Sussex and Warwickshire have often looked good. Some have perhaps punched above their weight (Leicestershire, Hampshire?) while poor Somerset are Finals Day regulars but with just the single success to their name. But what about the individuals who have illuminated the tournament over the past decade?

Luke Wright, Graham Napier and Darren Maddy made their careers out of their all-round performances, and destructive batting in particular. However, none make my all-time XI. Adam Hollioake was certainly an innovative captain in the first few years but wasn't an enduring figure in the English game. Andrew Symonds' monster strike rate of 180 for three different counties and Mushtaq Ahmed's miserly economy rate of 5.88 also fail to make it because they played under thirty games apiece. Brilliant flares but burned out relatively quickly.

A number of my team have opened the innings, some as pinch-hitters. However I shall go for the mighty Marcus Trescothick and Jonathan Trott. Marcus has almost 2000 T20 Cup runs to his name for Somerset and, at 37 years old, hopefully he has a few more up his sleeve. His strike rate of 161 is one of the best of any player still going. Before England came beckoning with a central contract, Trott was a highly effective anchor for Warwickshire, averaging more than 40 with the bat. In 2009, he aggregated 525 runs.

To be honest, any of my Eleven could bat anywhere in this line-up. I'd have Matt Prior next. He has scored 1572 runs in the competition, with a strike rate of more than 150. He didn't always keep wicket in T20 and Essex's James Foster has three times his number of catches, but the England Test star just shades it in my view, and also wears the gloves. Azhar Mahmood has been a vteran for a long time now, be it in England, the IPL or anywhere else. As a clever all-rounder, he has few peers, especially in the 2000s, and was an integral part of Surrey's early successes. His tally of 104 wickets is unsurpassed, and taken alongside 1795 runs at a strike rate of 142, he is probably the most effective all-rounder of them all. Right behind him is Leicestershire and Kent's Darren Stevens. Even approaching 40, he remains a superb cricketer in all forms of the game without ever making the England team. He has the highest runs aggregate (2209) and has played more matches than anyone else in the domestic game (103). 46 wickets at under seven an over illustrate his worth as a medium-pace bowler, too.

Aussie Ian Harvey trotted around the globe and the English counties but in T20 he was a great finisher and scored three hundreds, more than anyone else. Like Stevens, his seam and swing often brought him wickets, too. Next up is Mike Yardy. ALthough a fine batsman in his own right, it is as a miserly spin bowler and canny captain that he earns his place in my T20 Cup team of the decade. In his spell as skipper, Sussex won more than 70% of their fixtures, which is quite an achievement!

Alfonso Thomas and Dmitri Mascarenhas are another two men who have sought the T20 dollar around the world, but some of their best performances have come in the English game. Primarily bowlers, they have 157 wickets between them and while the 'Fons' is famous for his superb 'death' bowling', the Hampshire all-rounder has been an excellent one for strangling batsmen in mid-innings. He was instrumental in his county's triumph last season. The Somerset evergreen's 33 wickets in 2010 remains a competition record. My final two are Warwickshire's Neil Carter and Glamorgan's spin wizard Robert Croft. Both played as pinch-hitters in their latter days and Carter in particular averaged a strike rate of 139 over a period of 91 matches. Before departing in 2012, each snared more than 80 T20 Cup victims, too.

Others who came close to selection include Ali Brown, David Hussey, Brad Hodge, Jimmy Adams, Yasir Arafat and Samit Patel but I reckon the above eleven have contributed more than most during the period of the Twenty20 Cup in all of its sponsored guises. If one gets slogged, bring on another. Six wickets down after ten overs, or fifty ruins to get in the last three? Never fear, this lot bat all the way down to eleven. Even if Murali, Kohli, Gayle and co had seen more or indeed any action in this tournament, they may have struggled to displace the likes of Crofty, Stevens or Tres.

Player of the Week: Jason Roy

Spoilt for choice this week, and the main contenders featured a number of former Players of the Week. Ian Bell's magnificent double-century in the Oval Test was a wonderful performance and showed again how good a batsman he is, and has been for several years now. Chris Woakes's ten wickets (including a first innings 7-20) and two top-scores for Warwickshire was even more remarkable for the fact that he ended up on the losing side, against bottom-club Hampshire. David Masters was again in the wickets, both in the Championship and the CB40 for Essex.

Today's 40-over group fixtures produced some humdinger innings. Alviro Petersen struck ten sixes out of 141 in Glamorgan's win over Lancashire, Jacques Rudolph returned to form for Yorkshire with 132 in 112 balls (following a 120 in the Championship) and Durham captain Phil Mustard opened his innings by taking the Northants attack for 139. The week's four-day cricket featured a brilliant century by Essex's 21 year-old Adam Wheater, who now improbably boasts a first-class average of more than 50, another measured hundred by James Taylor and an excellent 145 by James Vince in that vital victory for Hampshire.

There was also a rare century in both innings made by Sussex skipper Mike Yardy. He compiled 130 and a run-a-ball 122 as he looked to declare against Yorkshire. He also contributed a CB40 50 during the week. However, he is pipped to the post by young Surrey batsman Jason Roy.

His week featured three innings which were instrumental in maintaining his county's march towards the CB40 semi-finals. Against Northants, he hit 65 in 42 balls, then at Edgbaston, he reached three figures (101 in 95 balls) and four days later, his contribution to the Surrey cause increased yet again, adding 131 in only 99 balls, almost as many as the Leicestershire opposition manage between them.

It should be hardly surprising that such a talent should have been born in South Africa but he has been less effective in the first-class game, averaging only 30. However, in one-dayers and T20, he is looking the real deal and his fielding has also garnered rave reviews since his Surrey debut as an 18 year-old. Another young player worth keeping an eye on.

Give Mike Yardy time

After the experience of Marcus Trescothick in recent years brought the shadow of depression amongst sports stars on to the radar, it should be no surprise when another prominent cricketer falls victim to mental illness. The old 'pull yourself together, lad' sentiments are insensitive, to say the least, and offensive to the millions of people in the UK who suffer from depression to some degree or other.

When Mike Yardy came home early from the World Cup, Geoff Boycott was mischievously partially-quoted in a way that put the outspoken commentator in a very bad light. I read his week that he apologised for his comments but remarked that in his day such illnesses were not widely known about. Actually, I think they were, but were attributable to being 'down' or 'in a strop'. Indeed, one of Boycott's Yorkshire team-mates in the 1970s and 1980s, David Bairstow, suffered from depression and ended his own life thirteen years aged only 46. I don't know whether this manifested itself during his playing days. It is believed that alcohol, poor health and financial problems were contributory factors to his suicide, so it is possible that he hid his troubles behind a boozy sociable facade. However, if even rumbustuous Tykes can succumb, it could happen to anyone.

Yardy has become a useful fringe player in the England one-day set-up, getting his chance after some useful Twenty20 performances for Sussex opening the batting and contributing some very economical spin bowling, too. He may have an ungainly style but to have an economy rate of only 6.40 in 80-odd matches is world-class. His performances for England have been moderate at best, with both bat and ball, but he remains an excellent county performer for Sussex. His first-class average is just shy of 40, with a career-best innings of 257, but he rarely turns his arm over in four-day cricket. With Panesar and Rayner in the side, he doesn't really need to.

I was glad to see him return to the fray earlier this season, but sadly without finding any kind of form. Almost certainly the illness was restricting him and so he and his county have rightly recognised the need for Mike to take another break. With Trescothick, it is the prospect of touring abroad that tears him apart but with Yardy it seems to be a bigger issue. As the Somerset skipper wrote in his excellent autobiography "Coming Back to Me", the most important things are admitting the illness and receiving the support you need. If a player endures physical trauma - breaking a leg or contracting cancer - he would get universal sympathy, so why not someone suffering a mental condition?

I don't know how soon, if ever, Mike Yardy feels ready to take to the cricket field again, but he should be allowed the time necessary, by those close to him, the Sussex and England set-ups and the media. Good luck to him.