Today's post is a special report from Arvind Joshi, organiser of 3 and 4 day club cricket matches for Clintus CC in India.

We recently played two thrillers which brought to the fore the immense content and thrill of the longer version of the game and reinforced my belief that this is the real learning ground for youngsters .Both games were 3 days with no limit to overs.

Match 1: vs. East Dehli CC

East Dehli fielded a very strong Academy based team coached by Dinesh Varma, boasting many state (county-equivalent) players at the age-group levels/adults. Clintus conceded a first innings lead and then fashioned a result with some brilliant bowling and fielding in the fourth innings – bowling East Delhi out in under two-and-a-half hours. Clintus' 15-year old medium pacer Palash Joshi blasted out the first three wickets with one each in his 2nd, 3rd and 4th overs to set it up (4-2-14-3). He has played county cricket for Middlesex U-14s and represents Acton CC in London.

Match 2: vs. South Dehli CC

South Dehli have won the Delhi Premier cricket league in the past and have produced several first class and some international players. They had a current North India player (U-17) who hit 119 and 88 in the match. However, once again Clintus' Palash Joshi started with a wicket with his first two balls to reduce South Delhi to 0 for 2 and ended up with 17-2-62-5 to almost set-up a win. Clintus failed to win only because the South Delhi team had turned up two hours late on the final day due to a traffic snarl. South Delhi were bowled out in their second innings in under three hours.

Both the collapses came in the afternoon where the wicket was actually at its most placid and were engineered by innovative field placings, very attacking bowling and plans for different batsmen.

In these games bowlers attack and think out batsmen and batsmen have to often play the waiting game and technique holds sway. The skipper has to set innovative fields to make things happen. In my view this format is far superior to limited over games and will help develop skills players can use in the professional game.

Could matches like this happen in the UK?