Cricket - the game for brewers and the MA

England's Ashes joy this summer, in case you're the only one who hasn't noticed, has been played out against a backdrop of Red Stripe billboards at the nation's test venues - to the delight of its Bedford brewer Charles Wells.

The inspired advertising tie-up, which has propelled the beer's sales as sweetly as a Pietersen pull, is one that other brewers - notably Thwaites and Fosters - have emulated. And Caledonian is also keen to identify with the values that cricket's seen to embody, as MD Stephen Crawley makes clear in his My Shout column (p6) this week.

In fact, he's organised a game in a fortnight between his firm and the Morning Advertiser to be played at Grange Park, Edinburgh, where Scotland (sponsored by Deuchars) play their games. The hope is that this becomes an annual fixture, perhaps played for a little urn of hops.

Crawley, a cricket nut who played for Lancashire in his youth, caught a flight from Edinburgh at 5am on Monday morning to take his seat at the Oval. No doubt he bumped into the Charles Wells crowd during the day, as well as many other brewers and licensees who excused themselves from work that day.

If he did meet the Charles Wells marketing team, he would have noticed their nerves were doubly frayed from the cricket, but also from the impact play was having on a Bombardier advertisement for the MA, which had to be created and placed by 11am that Monday morning.

Conscious that victory could go either way, the ad was designed in two styles, one celebrating an England win, the other dealing with the disastrous eventuality of an England defeat.

One nervous wreck in the marketing team told Snifter: 'We pooh-poohed the second ad, and told our media buyers to place the first. England then collapsed to 121 for 4! New Bombardier brand manager Andrew Turner was the most nervous of the lot, until much, much later in the day.

If you'd like an England-style cricket shirt, click on Charles Wells' Red Stripe website at www.redstripe.net