Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Steve James says that the ECB is now beginning to have a retink about the spurious nicknames given to county sides in a bid by marketing men to make them more appealing. How many people know who are the Phantoms, Lightning, Dragons, Steelbacks ...

"If you can reel off the counties related to those monikers, please accept my hearty congratulations, even if that anorak does look a little silly. If not, do not fear, because you are not alone in your indifference to such superfluity. Be grateful that the nicknames, introduced in 1999, are rarely listed without their geographical identities. For that is the problem: to do so is too long-winded.

"Even the England and Wales Cricket Board are now beginning to wonder about their viability. An unofficial sounding out of media outlets was made earlier this season and the response was not encouraging. A waste of time was the general consensus."

Cricinfo sticks to using traditional county names - despite terse emails in the early days from county PR men and the ECB - because most readers were bewildered when we briefly adopted the nicknames. Any attempts to persuade people to grow familiar with the names was not been helped when Surrey decided last year to change theirs ...

"The Lions have become the Brown Caps, which at least is nearing their ubiquitous, if mischievous, sobriquet on the county circuit. That is the Brown Hatters, in case you are wondering."