Well, our cunning plan to watch the South African price drift out after losing the Twenty/20 game and jump on it was foiled by the weather - much like the rest of the summer's plans - as the game at Chester-Le-Street was called off the day before scheduled play...

We see South Africa as hot favourites for the series, and we saw 1.7 as a viable price to get involved.   The market agrees with our view, however, and currently you won't get better than 1.53 on the South African boys.   England seem to be perpetually over-rated in the betting market for One Day cricket, but this time - possibly due to the New Zealand series earlier in the year - the prices are a little more realistic.
 
There are reasons to be cheerful for England fans, however, with new captain Kevin Pietersen at least saying some of the right things.   His plan to bat Owais Shah at three looks solid - we see him as a potential series top scorer - and with Pietersen at four with Prior and Wright and possibly Bopara lower down the order, England have solid players down the order who can build an innings if things are in crisis, or explode if the platform is in place.
 
South Africa's squad brings in the mercurial Herschelle Gibbs who's always fun to watch, as well as Morne Morkel's brother Albie Morkel, who you may remember launched a number of balls during his spell in the IPL, the deepest of which went so far that it had to pass through passport control on it's journey.  Mind your windows.
 
As usual, the less mobile bowlers have dropped out of the Test squads, including Andre Nel from the South Africans and Steve Harmison who ruled himself out for the home team.
 
Overall, we'll give it a small back of the drawn series.   Weather has been rubbish all summer, so in a five match series there's always likely to be at least one game rained out (almost certainly the one where I make arrangements to sit and watch it all day), and the sides are close enough that England will surely win a game, so 1-1 is a possiblilty with current weather, or 2-2 is possible if England play well, and at around 11.0, it looks like a little bit of value.   If the first game were to be rained out, lay off to lock in a respectable profit !

Paul Sculpher.