Something Must Be Done. Sir Ian Botham’s complaint about the tr... system in county cricket - following Durham’s loss of their young all-rounder Paul Coughlin to Nottinghamshire, and their several previous losses - strikes a chord in cricket followers who have a vested interest in fairness.


Durham, however, are not simply a special case but a unique one. Their financial irregularities,cheap wholesale jordans, and the ECB’s drastic ... year, have made them so. The sight of the richer counties - those who own a Test ground - circling like vultures over the stricken corpses of weaker counties is always repulsive,Kicksokok.com, and even more so in Durham’s case because Mark Stoneman and Scott Borthwick, along with Coughlin, have been lured away - with Keaton Jennings also rumoured to be looking for a route south.


But the sympathy we may feel for Durham should not cloud the overall issue of transfers from one county to another. Durham will recover, in time,cheap retro jordans, so the solution should not be hastily manufactured now in order to protect them specifically.


Botham also cited the potential conflict of interest involved when Coughlin was signed by a county, Nottinghamshire,cheap jordans for sale, that has an England selector in Mick Newell as director of cricket. But whereas certain counties - notably Middlesex through the ages - used to be favoured unduly by the national selectors, I would not say that happens now.









Paul Coughlin, one of Durham's most promising players, has chosen to join Nottinghamshire






The process of identifying England players, almost from the cradle, is so organised now by the High Performance Centre in Loughborough that nobody is going to get picked on the basis of one selector’s wish or whim.


Has anyone from Nottinghamshire been favoured in recent years? Alex Hales deserved his chance to open in Test cricket. Samit Patel would argue - and does openly argue - that he has deserved more opportunities than he has been given.


Dawid Malan and Toby Roland-Jones are both Middlesex players brought into the Test team this season, but there was no sign that Angus Fraser was pushing them as the county’s director of cricket and another England selector. You could equally well argue that Roland-Jones should have been given his Test debut, and Malan his T20 England debut, before this season.


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I don’t think there is any chance of a level playing field in county cricket. The bigger ones will always be preying upon the smaller ones. The nearest we can get to a solution is to reward a county even more for producing a top-class England cricketer - and the ECB are going to look at increasing the financial incentives - and also impose a time for transfer activity. Then we would not have the unseemly scramble for players in mid-season which has provoked considerable resentment, like Yorkshire’s signing of the Worcestershire batsman Tom Kohler-Cadmore, and Warwickshire’s forays into the market to rejuvenate their ageing squad.


“Personally I’d be quite supportive of a football-style transfer window,” Will Brown, Gloucestershire’s chief executive, told the Telegraph.


Perhaps the end of May would be the right time to end transfers for the season, after the first half of the championship season and the first few white-ball games. Complete freedom of movement is anarchy; no freedom of movement is serfdom. Trust cricket, and its innate sense of fairness, to find a balance between the two.


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Spain’s three kilometre-long cliff-side path, built 100 metres above the Desfiladero del los Gaitanes gorge, was closed in 2001 following five deaths in 1999 and 2000.


Daredevil tourists continued to try their luck along it however, prompting local officials to launch a $3.36m (?2.23m) scheme ten years ago to renovate it.


Now that a glass floor has been installed and the final planks laid, the walk will reopen to the public during Holy Week, which begins on March 29, according to Elías Bendodo, the president of the Diputación Provincial de Málaga.



Walkers on the Caminito del Rey path earlier this month (spain-holiday,http://siemprelucenacf.es/index.php/component/user/?option=com_content&view=article&id=115cheapjordanshoesfreeshipping.com/bolg,jordan shoes.com)


John Kramer, a local who walked the path in April 2013, remembers it being “completely insane”.


“One of the most worrying things on the day [of my previous walk], was the safety cable had snapped a month previously - an Italian climber fell over 80m and miraculously,cheap authentic jordans,http://www.wiski.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=3814750cheapjordanshoesfreeshipping.com/bolg, not only survived,cheap jordans,http://www.xietou.com/E_GuestBook.aspcheapjordanshoesfreeshipping.com/bolg, but walked away unscathed. Needless to say, it didn't inspire much confidence!"





He is so sure that the new path is safer however, that he intends to take his family along with him to try it.



The newly-built Caminito del Rey seen earlier this month (spain-holiday.com)


“The opening is exciting," he added, "it's now time to visit with my children. I just hope its popularity with day trippers won't ruin the area too much.”



A close-up of the new walkway show a hairy section of the old walkway alongside it (spain-holiday.com)


The 110-year-old walkway, set in the village of El Chorro, north west of Málaga, has been fixed with a new wooden pathway and equipped with safety lines and steel bolts for visitors, who will be required to wear a helmet to walk across it.




Walkers on Caminito del Rey in 2006 (Gabi / Flickr)


The dizzying path, set above the Guadalhorce River, will be opened from Tuesday to Sunday in the summer and winter.


Entry will be free during the first six months, with nearly 30,000 tourists already booked to brave the new pathway, according to local media. Tickets are available at caminitodelrey.info/en/#2. Public transport between the start and end of the walkway is being improved also.




Caminito del Rey (the 'Kings’s walkway') was completed in 1905 and was used by construction workers carrying goods to the Guadalhorce dam. Its royal association came when it was inaugurated by King Alfonso XIII in 1921,cheap air jordans.





Overview of Caminito del Rey (Fotolia/AP)