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On the face of it, the decision of the 18 counties to return to the old-style Benson and Hedges Cup format in 2000 goes directly against the ECB's reform document enacted and agreed only two years ago. It was generally felt that standards of both batting and bowling were suffering from too much limited-overs cricket which, while improving the quality of fielding, encouraged unsound batting techniques and bowling that was essentially defensive.

Hurrah then for the demise of the cup which, in its 27-year history, had made for a lively early season start and given 15 of the counties the thrill of carrying off the B & H Cup.

Only Durham, Glamorgan and Sussex, by the way, have failed to reach a B & H final.

Well, while the demerits of the one-day version remain valid, so likewise are the points in favour. In the uncertain weather of April and early May, four-day championship matches are played before minimum crowds. County members and potential members, by contrast, have been attracted by the 50-over group of games that decide which two from each of the four groups reach the quarter-finals. The absence of these matches is reckoned to be at least partly responsible for a general drop in 1999 county memberships.

Another point in favour is that the counties will be getting early value from their star players before they are claimed by an annual programme, as from next year, of seven Tests. England next year play two home Tests against Zimbabwe before tackling a five-match series against West Indies.

On balance then, I favour the reinstatement of the B & H. More importantly, one can only hope that under the new regime of Nasser Hussain and Duncan Fletcher England teams will be chosen who show a more positive front than was seen, for instance, in the World Cup. In several respects, the Edgbaston Test was a freak of a match containing some indifferent cricket. However, England's victory was the main thing and I thought Hussain emerged with much credit both on the field (apart from his running between wickets) and in what he said both before the match and afterwards. I suspect he has a good tactical sense, is a believer in hard net practice rather than arduous hours in a tracksuit. Although it was certainly going to be a seamers' pitch, he not only picked a spinner but used him well. May he never ever go into the field without one!

Alex Tudor's innings was a tail-ender's dream of a lifetime. He chanced his arm, rode his luck, and in company with his captain made the match safe at maximum speed. Assuredly, he will never again smack the best part of 20 fours unhindered throughout by a deep third man. Graham Thorpe should have seen to it that his 99 not out should have been three figures.

Believe it or not, there is yet another limited-overs lark next summer in prospect, the details of which the ECB are not yet precise about. It is part of a concerted effort to encourage cricket among secondary school children, using the long summer evenings of June and July for a knock-out of 25 or maybe 20 overs a side. John Carr, the ECB director of cricket operations, tells me that there would be six groups of three counties, so that the minimum would be one home and one away fixture per county, the finalists emerging after four rounds. I would reserve judgment until one sees how such an affair can be fitted into an already full programme.

IF anyone wanted evidence that cricket lovers are, shall we say, a race apart, they may regard as proof a compendium of cricketing clergymen from the 18th century, aptly entitled the Willow and the Cloth. The compiler, Christopher Gray, having been educated at Bilton Grange and Rugby, was a hotel manager by profession until, aged 33, he emigrated to Lismore, New South Wales, and with his Australian wife set up a small publishing business entitled Winsor Editions. I reckon there are not far short of 2,000 potted biographies of clergy revealed as cricketers by research in Wisden, Haygarth's Scores and Biographies (10,000 pages), Lillywhite's Annuals and, of course, Crockford, an annual clerical directory. It involved, Mr Gray need scarcely have informed me ``many 4am starts and late nights over a period of many years''.

The entries range from Bishop David Sheppard, who very properly rates more than a page and contributes a Foreword, down to such as the Rev Joseph Were, who is recorded as making six and nought for Winchester against Oxford University in 1849 and, although not chosen again, might possibly have had further cricket in him had he not been struck dead by lightning aged 32. The Very Rev W R Inge, of St Paul's, known as ``the gloomy Dean'', had only limited success as a batsman, Lillywhite recording that ``he hits clean but too much up in the air'' and so failed to get his colours at Eton - hence, perhaps, his nickname. Canon F H Gillingham, equally popular preacher and after-dinner-speaker, who made 19 hundreds for Essex, is rightly named as making the first cricket broadcasts, at Leyton in 1927. But the editor fails to record that F H's brother, the Rev George, when honorary secretary of Worcestershire, swum the River Severn which flooded the ground to rescue the accounts books from the pavilion, bringing them to safety presumably between his teeth. The 1954 Wisden prefers this feat in preference to the legend that the Rev George had landed a salmon fishing from the pavilion steps.

Matthew Engel, the editor of Wisden, has requested a review copy, so I am told, of the Willow and the Cloth, which is being advertised in the cricket magazines and the Church Times.