< 1 minute readAt some point in 2013, Leicestershire were cut by the thunder. From then on, draws and losses appeared to be the only possible outcomes following four days of championship cricket. That’s a dispiriting world in which to live, sounding almost like something imposed on them by a judge. However, the
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A bit less County Championship?
< 1 minute readNo bad thing in our eyes. We’re a great believer in scarcity making something more attractive. Take northern hairy-nosed wombats, for example. Phwoar. Similarly, four-day matches might become something other than sporting wallpaper if there are fewer of them. We had to follow the County Championship as part of our
Continue readingMiddlesex fail to be anywhere other than top of the table
2 minute readTime for a County Championship update. The crucial piece of information is that Middlesex are now top. If Sussex defied their top order runlessness to take an early lead, Middlesex have for the most part adopted a different approach. Their strategy seems to involve spending quite a lot of time
Continue readingKevin Pietersen and the lonely ends of the spectra
2 minute readThe Kevin Pietersen saga is often described as a soap opera. This is quite accurate because the defining feature of a soap opera is that IT NEVER ENDS. Okay, Crossroads and Eldorado did, but you get what we’re saying. For the most part they just rumble on, day after day,
Continue readingHow Sussex took the lead without really batting all that well
2 minute readLet’s exploit this gap in England’s Test series to get up to speed with this year’s County Championship and the very top of the table specifically. Currently, that means Sussex. In their first five innings of this year, the individual members of Sussex’s top five passed 50 just four times
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Why we pay no attention to the second division of the County Championship
2 minute readEarlier in the year, someone-or-other expressed their reservations about adding three teams to England’s four-day competition and dividing it into three divisions of seven. They said that it would be hard to maintain the quality. We can’t remember who it was, but this comment seemed to us to betray a
Continue readingThe multi-coloured Excel monster that is the English domestic season
2 minute readEach year, The Cricketer produces a wall chart detailing all of the summer fixtures. It works well as a visual representation of the way the English domestic game is organised. White space is in short supply. It is as much an assault on the senses as a paper wall chart
Continue readingJonathan Trott joins Yorkshire
< 1 minute readAt least we think that’s what’s happened. As far as we can tell, Trott and a handful of others have signed for Yorkshire in time for the county’s tour to South Africa. Weirdly, there doesn’t seem to be any explanation why only seven of last year’s Championship-winning squad will be
Continue readingCounty Championship second division in 2014 – all you need to know
< 1 minute readJesse Ryder took 44 wickets at 18.09 for Essex. To put that in context, Ryder has taken 99 first-class wickets in his entire career. This season, he took four five-fors and had one ten-wicket match. These were added to the no five-fors he’d previously taken to give him a career
Continue readingLancashire are still not quite relegated
< 1 minute readScan the homepage of this website and you could easily reach some incorrect conclusions. The post about Alastair Cook has attracted 50-odd comments, so presumably that’s a hot topic, right? Not really. The vast majority are about Lancashire v Middlesex, a relegation dogfight (involving different breeds) which seems to be
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