Posted by Two games in, the first division of the County Championship has taken on a blobby, amorphous shape with three counties on the same number of points at the top. Will any of them still be in the running at the competition’s autumnal climax?
We may as well start with the table:
Just to highlight the margins here, if one ball had gone differently in yesterday’s Durham v Warwickshire game, the latter could have been third from bottom, so it seems safe to say this hierarchy’s far from settled.
Gaps are beginning to open though. It’s early days, but are any of those 35-point teams legitimate contenders?
Top three
As impressive as it was, Warwickshire’s nine-wickets-down victory was built on runs from the batters at six, seven and eight. As such, they’re shaping up as being incredibly annoying to play against but beyond that there’s plenty of room from improvement from the specialists given they only managed one win last year.
Nottinghamshire’s credentials are similar given they finished below Warwickshire last season. Josh Tongue made his debut in the first match of the season, almost two years after it was announced he was signing from Worcestershire. He took a five-for and Notts won – but the way the England attack was looking last winter, he could soon metamorphosise from an injury victim caterpillar into an injury beneficiary butterfly.
Sussex’s win this week was – somewhat unbelievably – their first in the top flight for a decade. Obviously ‘actually being in the first division’ is a pretty important entry requirement for such things, but we’re still slightly surprised. They won the Championship in each of the first two years of this website’s life and even post-Mushy they’ve had plenty of top quality bowlers – albeit mostly seamers (Jofra Archer, Chris Jordan, Ollie Robinson).
Will one of these counties win the title?
Nah, wouldn’t have thought so. Then again, the Championship is still a tournament in which sides can unexpectedly have a really good run. We wouldn’t put money on anything.
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Yep, that is one fine looking table.
Ah, so basically you are saying, “perhaps yes, perhaps no, perhaps perhaps”. Thanks KC, that clarifies the issue.
Woah there. Stop trying to pin us down to one particular array of opinions.