NWS - An Apology

It will not have evaded any of Next Week's Scoreboard's esteemed readership that this website did not cover the England Tour of Bangladesh, which took place earlier this year.

This post intends to both apologise for and explain the omission.

NWS is aware that this omission will have upset - perhaps even unbalanced - its readers. It is also aware just how many people rely on this website in order to plan their televisual viewing. With all that in mind, NWS is truly sorry for not previewing the two test matches in question. It will not happen again (well, certainly not until the next time, anyway).

The national press has tried to explain why this happened. Michael Atherton in the The Times thought it was a protest against Bangladesh holding Test Match status, whilst The Telegraph interpreted NWS' silence as a statement that a prediction of a Test Match involving Bangladesh was unnecessary. On the airwaves, Jonathan Agnew on TMS thought it could have been because the writer of NWS had moved house and didn't have access to a computer, whilst Nasser Hussain on Sky said it was because he was admitted to hospital for a hernia repair. The on-screen graphics demonstrating the operation looked painful.

Whilst there is some truth in all four of these explanations, a far more serious concern was at the heart of NWS's failure to publish. NWS has always been aware of its responsibility not to disturb the space-time continuum by letting the players know in advance what is going to happen in the matches in which they play.

But now, a new peril has become known to NWS. It transpires that illegal bookmakers have been relying on the accuracy and clarity of NWS' predictions to make huge sums of money. This was discovered after William Hill reported irregular betting patterns to NWS, following the conclusion of the South Africa tour. Happily, close cooperation between NWS, the ECB and the Indian Police led to the successful conviction last week of the ringleader of an illegal betting circle in Mumbai.

(Naturally, NWS couldn't publish this apology any earlier, as that could have prejudiced the court case.)

Anyway, now the villains are behind bars, roll on the Bangladesh Tour of England, 2010.