Lancashire survived a late onslaught from Graham Napier to secure a 28-run win over Essex in Group A of the Clydesdale Bank 40 yesterday.

It is strange to think that in 12 days' time we will have completed a third of our Test matches for the summer. We've got three Tests against West Indies, the first of which was due to begin at Lord's today, and then three against South Africa later in the summer.

View From the Middle: I had a poor winter with the bat but I have not lost confidence in my ability

View from the middle: I've started to get into horse racing a lot and Alastair Cook really knows his stuff

ICC Combined XI 281 & 164-9dec England 185-8dec & 261-7

In the second of our nature specials, David Randall talks to National Trust experts who reveal 40 of their prime places to spot the best and rarest of British flora and fauna, from butterflies and dormice to wildflowers and falcons

It is a curious sensation, to be working in the middle of a national newspaper newsroom convulsed with the noisiest scandal for years, involving public outrage, gross malpractice, a media group in meltdown, Scotland Yard in turmoil and the political system in ferment, and to be writing about badgers and cuckoos.

Two hardy sub-genres of cricket literature are the adventures (usually disastrous) of a bunch of mixed-ability misfits who form a team to play friendly – and not so friendly – matches, and one-man odysseys around the country to take the temperature of the game in its myriad forms and locations.

England's cricketers be warned. Their concentration and steely resolve to win the forthcoming Test series against India could be put to the ultimate test by sledging comparing them to a pair of pyjamas, looking like a donkey's tail or being called the son of an owl.

Levi Bellfield is one of the most dangerous serial killers Britain has known.

The Lord's pavilion is a hallowed sanctuary where members of the Marylebone Cricket Club can while away a Test match day with little to worry about – except whether they have got their "bacon and egg" ties on. The peace is only shattered by the odd six hit by a batsman straight down the ground.

Blind people are being taught a revolutionary technique that allows them to live independently. Jerome Taylor tries it out

Echo-location is not something you would associate with human hearing, but the idea is not as daft as it may at first seem.

It is the height of fashion to deride Ricky Ponting as a captaincy numbskull. Pugwash without the instinct. This is the man who lost the Ashes three times, something no other captain had done, or been allowed to do before. This is the man who was at the helm when Australia lost their first home Test series for 16 years in 2008.