County Cricket

I Steal From The Beggar’s Plate

LordCanisLupus23 Comments

First up, some house notes.

TLG and I have full-time jobs and other things we need to do over and above this blog. This means that we put a great deal of trust in you to do the right thing in the comments because we can’t monitor 24/7. We don’t set rules or parameters, we aren’t a newspaper or a paid-for or getting paid to do blog. We’re a couple of blokes with something to say. If we spot something that we think goes beyond what we think is acceptable in the comments, then we moderate (often to decide whether to allow or not). That we’ve had to do so on such an infrequent basis is testament to you, but we also know feelings run high.

If you have a complaint on anything you’ve read that you think is beyond acceptable, and it remains, please e-mail me on dmitriold@hotmail.co.uk or if you follow me on Twitter, tweet me (@dmitriold ) .

With that out of the way, I thought I’d usher in the start of the county cricket season with a little piece on our domestic game.

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Chesterfield 2008

The subject of county cricket is really one of those that can never be solved. I had a go at this Schleswig Holsteinshire and if anything, in the light of the comments from Russell Degnan, I’ve probably hardened in that view. I don’t think the will exists, or the solution apparent, that will give us the perfect domestic structure on which to go forward. There are many out there, many county members, who do not give a flying one about international cricket. They don’t all reside in Yorkshire either. It struck me in my time as a member at Surrey how little the membership cared about their players reaching international honours. “county cricket does not exist to fill the England team” was a very common remark.

County cricket is increasingly becoming like exclusive art galleries. It may be of substantial aesthetic value, of increasing nostalgic value as it ages, and available only if you are really committed to it, and that may be the problem. No-one is advocating demolishing old institutions and starting again, but we live in an age where a repackage here, a new broom there, can create something from nothing. After all, our top division was always the envy of Europe (with the possible exception of Italy) in the 80s and early 90s, but repackaging as the Premier League, giving clubs a few more quid, and lo and behold, the whole projection has changed. Despite the product sagging a little in the past few years, it’s still iconic enough to get the largest TV deal in UK sporting history by a distance. All the time this method, of buffering and repackaging, as Mark calls it “making it an event” tempts other sports. Rugby Union and Rugby League went through a revolution, with Heineken Cups and league play introduced to Union, and SuperLeague in Rugby League. The PGA Tour in golf has inhaled every other tour, so that there is now one source of the highest quality golf. Tennis had been a pioneer in this, with the ATP  and WTA Tours. Of course, the inspiration for many sports now is the NFL. The Champions League is desperate to bill its annual football final as the Superbowl of football. The problem with that is that in every year ending in an even number, there’s arguably a much bigger game being played less than six weeks later!

So English domestic cricket stands still. And is there anything inherently wrong in that? It depends on how you “consume” it, maybe?

Some out there on this blog do not bow down and worship to the current county cricket structure. For the purposes of this I’m leaving out the T20 debate for now as that’s separate. From my standpoint there’s not a lot of emotional investment in it. I can compare my feelings for sports teams across the sports – my club loyalties are Millwall, Boston Red Sox, Miami Dolphins, Chicago Bulls, Wigan Warriors, and, of course, whichever T20 team KP plays for!!!! Surrey are on a par with my rugby league favourites. I like it when they win, don’t get too bothered when they don’t.

The great Surrey team of the 1999-2004 era, roughly, coincided with the time I was a member. I got to see  some great cricket, with the common thread for much of my enjoyment being Ally Brown, Adam Hollioake, Saqlain Mushtaq, Martin Bicknell and for the second half, the imperious Mark Ramprakash. It was a golden time to watch them and I thoroughly enjoyed my days out. I was actually committing myself to watch them even more in 2005, my penultimate year as a member, but that came to an abrupt halt when my mum was diagnosed with cancer. I’d seen a few days of the initial games, got down to T-Wells as well, but things were to take a bad turn.

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Tunbridge Wells

The other thing that kept the interest in the County Championship was our annual Fantasy Cricket competition, based on the scoring system that was developed by Fantasy Football. There it was – one point for ever twenty runs, five bonus points for a hundred, minus one for any non-bowler for a score under 10, -2 for anyone at all who was dismissed for 0, one point for a catch, two for a stumping, two points for a wicket, five point bonus for five wickets, minus one for ever 20 runs conceded. Got all that? Teletext and the internet were on overload in the glory days. Legendary pick-ups like Mike Hussey (when no-one knew who he was) got our pub discussions going – Joe Scuderi was legendary for other reasons. Now I doubt I could get four people interested in this – in those days we had leagues of nine or ten! It did mean that team news was gobbled up, any snippets we could get on the wires eagerly awaited, and scorecards followed assiduously. Once the league died in 2008 (I ran it after a succession of others – we had a few people leave work, so got tougher to arrange) county cricket wasn’t an obsession. (I recall another notable thing from the latter days of that competition was I had to get squads and try to classify the players. One Kevin Pietersen in his first season was classed as a bowler in my annual player list. Imagine the glee of my colleague when he had immunity for scores under 10 for a prime batsman, Fantasy cricket was a batsman’s game, and KP racked up double hundreds while sitting at 11 in his batting order! Bastard).

Now how do I see County Championship cricket? A decent day out with mates might be the best answer. Last year I went to Surrey v Derbyshire on a rain-affected day, which was memorable for meeting Benny, and then had a terrific day at Lord’s for Day 3 of the Middlesex v Yorkshire game where I saw Toby Roland-Jones make his maiden hundred, and got the chance to meet  Mr Declaration Game and Mr Tim Wigmore. These days out, especially if we get lucky with the weather, are relaxing, get me away from work, and generally end in great days out with my good mates. The cricket, frequently, matters only when I’m behind the camera. That’s a bit harsh, actually, because I remember snapping away at Surrey v Middlesex through the zoom on the lens, and watching the mastery of Hashim Amla on a raging turner a few years back. That sort of thing isn’t too common, though.

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Too often, county cricket is used by some as some sort of badge of honour, a kind of haughtiness ensues when people discuss it. “Oh, don’t spoil our discussion on the merits of [insert jobbing county pro] with your international cricket stuff. I’m just not interested.” Fine, if that’s your boat, set up a county cricket discussion board of your own. I was warned off this early in my enhanced blogging career (2014) by nonoxcol, when I made the mistake of trying to bring some ECB issue into a county discussion. In my opinion this is part of the problem with the county structures and the long-form of the game. There’s too much inherent snobbery in it. I used to say that when the Beautiful South wrote a song, I thought they’d finish it, and congratulate themselves on how clever they were. That’s the impression I get of a number of county cricket fans. By no means all – I’ve had some great conversations with total strangers at county matches – but if you go to games, and read about them, you get the picture.

It’s easy to like the county championship. It’s relatively cheap – £15-£20 to watch decent quality stuff and the ability not to be held hostage by the catering arrangements at international and T20 games is really pretty OK. I like the peaceful atmosphere at The Oval and Lord’s on a working day, amidst the hubbub of the massive metropolis. It’s soothing and makes you feel light years away from your office, when it is really only a short bus ride away. Then there’s going to Guilldford, or T-Wells, or Chelmsford, or Arundel as we have over the past few years (not forgetting Whitgift and Southgate) and being a little more up close and personal – seeing KP at Whitgift, Ricky Ponting at Arundel  and Shane Warne at Southgate is just something else – which is a great day out. I’m looking to get down to Hove for the first time in 39 years this summer, for example. But this is about my personal enjoyment, not really an emotional investment in a competition or two.

That’s not sustainable as a business model. It never will be, so why try? It might just be time to accept that the County Championship is like it is, because that is what it is. An anachronism, never likely to be self-funding, always likely to be a compromise, and more likely to become skewed to the haves rather than the have nots. I just request that those who love it, cherish it and breathe it don’t act as if they are some higher power, someone sent from the Gods of Cricket to save the international fans from themselves, while also hoping and praying that those newly-retired or ensconced in press boxes don’t bite the hand that fed them and disparage it at every turn.

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Whitgift

But what do you think? I notice when I write about the domestic game in the UK there’s a rather lukewarm response. I know this blog has an international audience, but the majority of hits and comments are from the UK. Have a say. Speak up. Say what you think.

Predictions? Can’t see past Yorkshire, Warwickshire might run them close, not sure Middlesex can repeat what they did last year, can’t see my mob pulling up any trees. I start off with good intentions to go to watch it, but only go on very few occasions.

We have a trial type of post coming up related to this. Stay tuned.

Schleswig Holsteinshire

LordCanisLupus16 Comments

I’m a reasonably contented admirer of Lord Palmerston when it comes to my Victorian history. So much more interesting than Peel, Gladstone and the others around that time. A bit of the old Gunboat Diplomacy…. Without going all FICJAM on you, I commend his response to the Schleswig-Holstein question to you…

“Only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business—the Prince Consort, who is dead—a German professor, who has gone mad—and I, who have forgotten all about it.”

I feel much the same way about the English cricket summer. For Schleswig Holstein read what to do about Leicestershire? It is a question that, simply, cannot be answered. We have inherited a long, historic structure of 18 counties we would not replicate now if starting a competition. There are variances in size. A solution cannot be found that will satisfy all parties.

“We want less cricket” say many of the players, but like their peers in other sports that won’t be matched by “we’ll take smaller salaries” which is the logical consequence of a reduction in productivity in these modern times. “We want a T20 series with all the stars, in a block, with franchises” say the progressive looking so and sos who see and smell a quick buck. But the counties see their golden goose being taken away after building up the audiences the past couple of years, each time those calls for T20 to be “sexed up” reaching a crescendo after the Big Bash concludes and our retinue of shiny toy merchants, probably including me, want to see us imitate it. The ECB have elongated the season so that the county championship starts in the first rather than the latter weeks of April, and that it finishes a lot closer to October than I might recall it doing so in the past. Then there’s the tricky old issue of the other competition. The not 20, not timed, format. 40, 45 or 50 overs. Played in a block or throughout the season? Played when? Where? How? Who cares? Why?

From 1905 the County Championship had 16 clubs. Number 17 came in 1921, number 18 in 1992. In 2000 we went to two divisions with three-up, three-down. This was too much sporting meritocracy from those who wanted “long-term planning” and was reduced to two-up, two-down. We’ve had the Sunday League, the B&H Cup (55 overs for a long time, 50 when it finished and with a mid-season final) and the 60 over cup which had that first Saturday in September final. There were play-offs in the 40 over comp, some other odd formats based on where you finished in the county championship for the 50 over comp. We’ve had short season T20s, 16 game pre-qualifying T20, and 14 games (where it doesn’t seem to matter that this is disjointed, but the sanctified County Championship does). The County Championship has been three days, three and four days, and now all four day cricket. It was never everyone home and away in the 18/17/16 team days (Can’t vouch for the latter back until 1921). There were fixtures a week in the CC for the entire Summer, until recently when they were bookended by and large at the ends of our season. We’ve had two universities, then six, then lord knows what. We had a pure knockout cup, and one with group phases. We’ve had leagues in limited overs. We’ve had absolutely bloody everything.

I am the first to rail against the “sport as a business” mantra. The sport needs to sustain itself as a whole. It needs to provide an outlet for talent to grow and develop before it reaches international standard, and it needs to do that in as cost-effective, but long-term way that it can. Those two ideals rarely coalesce. I’m reading “Barbarians At The Gate”, a book about the leveraged buy out of RJR Nabisco in the late 80s, and it’s plenty of making lots of money, but absolutely eff all to do with long-term growth. It’s short-term wealth and share-prices, and long-term well…… we’ll deal with that when we get there. That’s the times we live in now, kicking the can down the road, and hoping to get through another season. I said in a Tweet a few days ago that you can’t solve the glorious beast that is county cricket. Once we get that through our heads, then we can deal with what we have.

The one part of the equation that never seems to get called into question is the players side. We see many a survey complaining about their workload, that county cricket loses its meaning, that it’s a treadmill, flitting between format. OK. So they’ve said they want to work the system into blocks. They have their wish, supported by Director Comma, another of those brought up on the system of county cricket, but not so keen to laud its qualities once he got to the international limelight – see also Atherton, Mike. It does have considerable qualities. The standard, by and large, isn’t all bad. Overseas superstars didn’t come over here to experience our cold Aprils, our magnificent May ambience, or the leaf-fall of early Autumn. Mr Rabada isn’t coming to Canterbury for early season high jinks. It is a great school of learning, even now, when the top stars don’t come along. The T20 competition, much maligned, although not the unmitigated success some of its key plaudits would have us believe, isn’t a bloody disaster either. It seems we’re more interested in dressing up a competition to flog overseas (a la Big Bash), than one that works. And the Blast has posted increased attendances. Friday nights worked. There were good games, with good players, and crowds seemed to like it. It’s not for me, but then that’s not who it is aimed at. Matt Dwyer, the ECB’s recruit from Australia to get participation levels back up, said this in an article for All Out Cricket:

The Big Bash is unashamedly about attracting kids and their mothers: it’s not for you and I, it’s not for the traditionalist.

Here we get into the debate of TV coverage, which is a very separate topic and one with a life of its own. T20 in a block is for the players, it is not for the fans. As many point out, if a team has 7 home games in two blocks spread over, what, three weeks, at £20 a pop per ticket, how are families, who they want to attract, going to be able to watch all of them without a significant reduction in ticket prices. Those same ticket prices that counties depend on, and can be spread out more easily over fortnightly periods by and large, for their core revenue? I could make the flippant point that it isn’t about the international team, as we don’t choose our international T20 team on merit, but it’s about a route by which counties can better self-fund. They still need the revenues from the test and other international arenas, but it’s a way for them to contribute better. It’s damn easy for Yorkshire or Lancashire or the KPs to bang on about “franchise cricket”, but they have no plan for how those below that amazing height are going to keep the international cricketers, test cricketers of the future gainfully occupied.

I’ve seen mention of a pooling of resources, but that over-arching care for all attitude left these shores in all sporting formats long ago. Football fucked over its have-nots by making the Premier League for the benefit for the 8 or so clubs who would only get relegated if they left Tim Sherwood in charge too long, and pooling the perpetual vast revenues among themselves. Those smaller clubs who tried and dared became like Icarus. They got to the sun, paid out mightily, got relegated, went bust. Rugby union has its big club teams, and I’ve no idea of the strength beneath that level. Rugby leagues big prizes seem to reside in the big four clubs at the top of the game (Leeds, Wigan, St Helens and Warrington, I’m thinking). It’s business, not altruism. There will be a point where a Yorkshire franchise, perhaps run by similar people who run Yorkshire might say “hang about. Why should a Derbyshire be getting a cut of my hard work?”. The fact the county championship has 8 test venue counties and Somerset says a lot. It’s probably already happening. I’ve heard it said about my county side, that it isn’t really even a cricket club. It’s a successful conference facility running a cricket team.

Which leads me on to the Championship. Many of us profess to love it. That it’s just a wonderful thing. And it is, and I do. My fellow author isn’t so enamoured. Or so he’s told me. But do I support it? Do I hell. Why not? Because I have a full-time job, and a wife and dog to spend time with when I’m not there, and my wife isn’t a cricket fan. Any days I do go are on my annual leave, and I’m not taking too many of them in the summer for that. When I have gone, I’ve been the benefactor of free tickets. I’ve bought my own food and beverages. Great, at last season’s Middlesex v Yorkshire Day 3, I saw the newly crowned champions, a magnificent fightback by that North London mob, a Toby Rowland-Jones hundred AND I got to meet Mr Declaration Game and Mr Wigmore. A tremendous day out. I hardly contributed to the coffers though. I have stumped up some entrance money in the past, of course, but it’s not going to cover the hourly rate of a jobbing county pro, let alone the top boys. It is not economic. It will never be economic. I’m inclined to say leave it the hell alone. A messing about of the format is going to achieve nothing except annoy some bloody loyal followers of the sport. The sort this lot can’t get shot of in the chase for the Big Bash Street Kids.

I’ve done 1600 words, and I’m no nearer the answer. And nor are the people on the ECB committees and such like. Nor are any of us out there. There is no answer. Like the Scottish football league trying to do all it can to make it interesting, when it’s really only about two teams once the blue lot get back to the top of the pile, there’s no real point. It is what it is. A Big Bash type league isn’t going to do for cricket that the Premier League and all its bombast has supposedly done for football (our recent European club form is lamentable, our national team is pure Championship level in world terms), and deep down, people, you really all know it. You really do.

Me? Leave the County Championship as it is, even moving to three-up, three-down, but not fussed. A pure knockout 50 over comp. Even invite Netherlands, Ireland, Scotland, Denmark whoever to play in it. If it’s 18 teams, then one preliminary round, drawn at random, then a straight knockout with the Final played in June. T20 – well the Blast worked for audiences so I wouldn’t mess with it. This one I’d invite the national teams as well, have 21 teams, 3 pools of 7, each pool winner and second going through and the four best remaining records go into a Wild Card round, a la NFL. The four best records get home draws for the QFs, then there are home semis for the best record, and a Final. But it’s just a pipe dream. They want an 8 team tournament to get the mythical “best players”.

Of course, the national team lays over the top of that, like the hippo on the silentnight bed. Writing about that will be another 1000 words, and it’s late, it’s Friday, and Lord Palmerston is probably right. I’d forgotten about them.

Cheers.

Those Curious, Quiet Days

LordCanisLupus54 Comments

Good day to you all.

You don’t need to be as great an administrator as Paul Downton to note that output is down on here at the moment. That longer piece on Giles Clarke was written over a week ago, and I’ve not felt the urge, or had the time, to write anything else. TLG is also incredibly busy at this point. We’ll try to get some more stuff out, so keep checking in, but these are the dog-days of blogging and we don’t even have a tasty autobiography on the horizon to get enthused about!

Some points that aren’t worthy of an entire post, but caught my attention can be discussed here. What’s going on with Australia and Bangladesh? I have to say I am stunned that there are security issues that might prevent the matches going ahead. Clearly Pakistan is still a country too far for international teams, and I can’t see that really changing, but there’s never been a hint that Bangladesh shares the same problems, has there? I have a couple of benchmarks to go alongside here – India in 2008, when England returned after the Mumbai Hotel siege and played out two tests; and Sri Lanka in the 80s and 90s, when bombings were reasonably frequent, and yet teams toured (I seem to recall New Zealand coming home from one series). This may be due to lack of coverage in the UK, but you don’t get that impression of Bangladesh.

No-one can say that Australia are wrong to do what they are doing because we don’t know the full facts. But you are really left wondering if this is worse than being in England during the 2005 bombings, or if this were India they were talking about, then there’d be this impasse. As I say, you just wonder.

To return to KP, I saw a quote where he supposedly says Strauss was right to drop him. The quote in the article says

“[Strauss] made his decision and it’s turned out absolutely fine. Absolutely it seems to be the right decision at the moment.

Notice how those last three words are left out of the headlines?

Sad to see the death of Frank Tyson, an England legend of days gone by, well before I was on this good Earth. Legends of his pace, of his winning exploits in Australia are passed down by those who saw him in action, who can tell of the greatness. In many ways, in this age where everything is covered on TV, and you can access pretty much anything, this air of mystery to someone like me adds so much. In the absence of personal experience, read the many tributes on the dedicated pages.

The County season drew to an end, with not too much drama in the first class game except relegation battles in the first division. Sussex went through the trap door, and that’s sad for a county that seem to do the right thing most of the time. Somerset and Hampshire had rocky seasons but survived, with Somerset’s last day win pulling them well away from the zone they had begun to flirt with. Hampshire stayed up by the skin of their teeth (2 points). Surrey won the 2nd Division with their summer surge finally catching and then passing Lancashire (and definitely having the better of their September match-up), who took second and looked nailed on for promotion from the start.

There was, of course, the One Day Cup Final, which was a great match, won by the unfashionable county over the flash boys. I could not help but regret that something like that, which Sky doesn’t really care about, couldn’t be held at a better time, and with more access. It had to compete with a crowded sporting calendar, and especially the start of the tedious Rugby World Cup (sorry folks, not my bag). Imagine if a wider audience could have seen the performances of old man Geraint Jones and the young tyro Sam Curran? That’s the sort of thing that inspires. But no. A great game, with great stories, passed the world by. No-one cares any more because the networks don’t care about it, and to a certain degree, players and counties don’t. I really think it needs to go to knockout format now. The group stages can be tainted when two or three counties lose early games and think it isn’t worth it and chuck out lower strength, unmotivated teams, which defeats some of its purpose. The same happens, to a lesser degree, in T20 (Middlesex, I’m looking at you) but it’s not as important. The crowds will still go, in much the same way as crowds turn up to those Premier League Darts things because the results don’t really matter, it’s the “entertainment”.

What is noticeable is the line-up of next year’s County Championship Division One. Surrey, Middlesex, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire (the original Big 6 test venues), Durham and Hampshire (two new test venues) and Somerset (the odd one out). One would suggest that if Tom The Empty Suit, and Graves the Gutless, could pick a county championship line-up this would be it, right down to Giles Clarke’s county being the odd one out in the line-up of 9!

Please do fill out the survey. I haven’t had too many responses so I’ll push the deadline back a bit. I suppose if you don’t want to do it all, then just do the best and worst journalist part, and the same for TV. After all, that’s all anyone is really interested in, isn’t it?

I’d also point out that I took up my annual ritual and purchased the 2015 Wisden from the Book People. I’m not paid to advertise them, but it’s worth looking. That Dmitri fella somehow ended up in it. Funny and all that.

I’m sure things will pick up with more international cricket on the horizon, so keep the comments and stuff coming. I have a piece on DoaG and the international scene to write…..

Guest Post: County Cricket – The Tail That Wags The Dog

LordCanisLupus11 Comments
The County Championship.....
The County Championship…..Last Tuesday – Surrey v Derbyshire (Dmitri Pics)

We have another new writer for the blog, by way of a guest post to get the debate flowing. Sean B, a panel member for the Ashes summer, has put together a discussion piece on the potential for re-structuring county cricket.

As always, really grateful for people putting in the time and effort to write for us, and I’d always counsel people to think that this is a first time post, and therefore one to treat with a bit more respect than my repeated old diatribes.

Take it away, Sean…

So we’ve won back the Ashes in glorious fashion and repelled those dastardly Australians’, so all is rosy in the garden of English cricket, right?? I think we might all agree on here (being as we’re most definitely outside cricket) that whilst the MSM might want us to think this, this is about as far from reality as it comes. This English team lacks the consistency and players to become number one, so why is this the case and who is to blame? The ECB? County Cricket? Or is it simply a mixture of the two?

Now don’t get me wrong, I love county cricket. I’ve been bought up with it as a staple for the past 25 years and am a staunch Middlesex fan, but the hard truth is that it is no longer fit to do what it is designed to do, which is to produce test quality individuals ready to go straight into the England team and perform. There I said it and I do not expect this view to be universally popular (I’ve already had my view branded on Twitter by one of the more well known county cricket apologists as “utterly nonsense”); however the stark facts of the current county cricket regime is that we play too much cricket, lurching from one form to another on different days, and this has led to a noticeable drop in quality of the four day game compared to that of 10 years ago. I also feel that the reduction in Kolpak qualified players has adversely affected the standard across both divisions, as the pool of good English youngsters gets smaller each year (it is a well known fact that less kids are playing cricket competitively now compared to 10 years ago). Now I’m not advocating a return to the darker days of county cricket, when anyone who had a South African passport and a cricket bat could get a gig (yes Sven Koenig, I’m looking at you), but I don’t buy the line that these players are blocking young English talent from getting a game. The likes of Peterson, Prince, Hogan and to a lesser extent Franklin are very good players in their own right, have been picked on merit and can help mentor some of the younger members of the team. The bottom line should be if you are good enough you will play, English qualified or Kolpak.

If I take a look back at this year’s Ashes series, the reality is that Adam Lyth, who was really the only opener we could pick based on county cricket form, was nowhere up to the task technically or mentally. Johnny Bairstow, who has murdered county attacks all year wrong, looked all at sea against better bowling and we are currently placing our spin hopes on a batsman (and one I rate) who up until a couple of years ago was most definitely a part time spin bowler. The sad fact is that those cricketers who have genuinely been a success at International cricket (Root, Broad, Anderson, Cook, & Buttler to an extent) have generally been whipped out of county cricket and thrown into the international set up long before they have started to pick up bad habits. On the flip side, those that have had to genuinely make their way in county cricket before elevation to the England side, have more often than not failed (Matt Prior & Paul Collingwood are the two notable exceptions). So why is county cricket currently failing to produce cricketers that can cut it on the international stage? I believe there are two major points that need to be addressed here:

  • We play far too much County Cricket and even worse, we mix and match the formats sometimes from day to day
  • The pitches we play on are so alien to those that are played on the international arena that the first time many of these cricketers face a non-seaming, spinning pitch is on their international debut

These I believe go hand in hand, the current format means that we start the season in April when there is likely to be green tops (and nothing for the spinners) and then we flog our cricketers until late September, which means there aren’t going to be too many 90MPH bowlers left charging in at that stage.

In particular, the two areas that concern me most are that there are simply no incentives for an up and coming county cricketer to want to bowl fast or to bowl spin, as the counties are preparing pitches for 70MPH trundlers who can get the ball to nibble both ways (no offence to the individuals, but a little part of me dies every time I see a Jesse Ryder or a Darren Stevens 5 wicket haul). Indeed, this is my major bugbear and this is where the Counties are just as blameworthy as their paymasters. The fact that it is far easier to stick with an old pro bowling slow accurate seaming deliveries on a green pitch than to prepare a good track and to put faith in a raw quick or a young spin bowler, hence the lack of these talents available to the England team. It makes me so angry that Scott Borthwick has had to reinvent himself as a number 3 batsman to even get a game (I remember the first time I saw him bowl, I said that he would get at least 50 England caps) or that Will Beer and Max Waller can no longer get a game in the four day format. These were the bright young hopes of English spin and county cricket has ruined them.

No wonder Lyth et al failed to make it at international level, it was probably the first time they had probably ever faced a left armer bowling at 90MPH or a decent test level spinner. How can you attach blame to them for that? You simply can’t. The question should be why had they have never faced this type of bowling in the first place?

The simple answer is that the quantity of county cricket is directly of detriment to the quality being played. We need a mandate from the ECB that divides the season into:

  • 3 divisions of four day cricket playing 10 games a piece
  • A window for the England Lions to play against each of the touring teams thus exposing them to international cricket
  • A strictly enforced pitch inspection team encouraging a fair contest between bat and ball and not penalizing pitches that turn
  • A summer window for a T20 tournament, whatever the format
  • Two knockout 50 over tournaments at the start and end of the season

This is very much my opinion and many will disagree, but this is the only format in which I can see County cricket raising the quality of it’s top divisions whilst reducing the workload of our county players. Three divisions are absolutely necessary to do this, as it will strengthen the talent available for the top division and there will be less games but of a higher quality as a result (mostly the two teams that come up from Div2 normally go straight back down again), especially if the England management team only look to pick individuals from the top division. I appreciate that this will make it hard for teams in the third division as many of the top teams will hoover up their best talent; however the standard at the bottom of the current Division 2 is as poor as I can remember, which is another reason why the promoted teams struggle so much the following season. I would prefer a stronger Division one and Division two, comprised of 6 teams each, rather than keeping the status quo pandering to those teams who have hardly won a game of four day cricket in the past couple of years.

I would start the four day season in May (after the first 50 over cup), when hopefully the pitches would have dried out a bit from the winter with a window between the first and second games to allow a full strength Lions team to play the touring opposition. The four-day competition would potentially go on until the 20/20 window in late July/early August and would then wrap up in early September (I would imagine the last couple of games of four-day cricket would end up here as it’s impossible to schedule them elsewhere unless we start in April, which I am totally against). We would then wrap up the season with another 50 over knock out tournament. The other law I would like to bring in is that the pitch inspectors would have full power to dock points for overly green pitches or those that are not a fair contest between bat and ball. Although it is exhilarating to watch 16 wickets fall on a day (it has happened to me twice this year), it is not conducive to high quality cricket and encourages teams to pick medium pace dobbers, rather than players that can make things happen on a flatter pitch, which is the very thing I am trying to get away from.

So why are we still stuck with the status quo? Well that goes back to my point raised in the first paragraph about the way the ECB tippy toes around the problem.

Nick Hoult’s piece in the Telegraph last week showed how the ECB had again allowed the county chairmen to walk all over them in negotiations and had needed to water down their vision of reshaping county cricket to such an extent that is practically obsolete from the original version and achieves precisely nothing. So what are Tom Harrison and Andrew Strauss actually doing apart from basking in the glory of a home series win and selling new commercial deals (Hydration breaks – please give me strength)? They are certainly not doing that which they should be doing, which is creating a platform that can allow England to produce high quality international players whatever the format.

I have the horrible feeling though, that I am simply being horribly naïve. Why bother to pick a fight with the county chairmen, when you can carve up international cricket in a way that allows you to make the most money? Why bother lowering the price of international cricket to engage fans or allow FTA coverage when you can sell out highly inflated hospitality boxes to high worth individuals? Why bother taking the time out to clearly set out a plan for the betterment of England team, when the MSM will buy any bullshit that’s on offer and tell you it’s gospel?

The stated aim to reach the pinnacle of International cricket by reshaping county cricket is simply a smoke and mirrors job to occupy the chuntering masses. It’s the money stupid and don’t you ever forget that.

@thegreatbucko