This article appeared in the Western Mail on the 26th of June 2002, after Wales had beaten England in a 50-over challenge match. You can find a link to it here
WALES should have a Test cricket team following their victory over England, business minister Carwyn Jones said yesterday.
Mr Jones said it was ``anachronistic'' to have Welshmen playing for an English cricket team. He said the only solutions would be to rename the English side Great Britain or to split it up with separate teams for Wales, Scotland and England.
He said it was bizarre that the Welsh players in Monday's game at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, were effec-tively trying to play their way into the opposing team which they beat.
``It is time we had a Welsh Test team,'' he told reporters at the Welsh Assembly.
``How strange it must be for one team to hope to play well enough to join the opposition team. It has always struck me as rather odd to have a Great Britain cricket team. It is anachronistic to call it England when it has players from outside England. ``Either you should have a Welsh Test cricket team or a cricket team called Great Britain.'' Mr Jones will undoubtedly be accused of opportunism. And he conceded his call was unlikely to prove successful.
``But it is something that needs to be addressed given the obvious quality of Welsh cricket,'' he added.
Wales caused a major upset with their emphatic eight-wicket victory against England. The win was a warm-up game for England in preparation for a triangular one-day series against Sri Lanka and India.
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