Category: County cricket

2 minute readRefreshingly manageable levels of information this week with very little of note happening with regards to candidates for the England squad. Gary Ballance This is probably the headline event. Gary Ballance made 174 against Northamptonshire. Reading between the lines written by better-informed people than us, it’s possible that England have

2 minute readWe missed a trick when naming our county players to watch. Instead of trying to keep things manageable by limiting ourself to five, we should have completely changed the rules and just named all the England squad contenders who we were watching anyway. What happens now is we open all

2 minute readThat’s ‘players to watch in 2014’. We don’t have 2,014 players to keep an eye on. In fact, we’ve got fewer than ever before – just five. A reminder of the qualification criteria: Qualified to play for England No established internationals Youngish Playing in the first division of the County

< 1 minute readThe fight for England spots continues to a soundtrack of very gentle applause from a smattering of supporters who didn’t happen to have much on that day (activity-wise). Top order Jonathan Trott made 37 against Sussex – although to be fair, that has been the second-highest score in two completed

< 1 minute readEveryone knows that the key to a strong international side is ‘competition for places’. It absolutely isn’t the case that ‘competition for places’ is really just a synonym for ‘the first XI’s turned crap’. Yesterday’s England Squad Watch ended rather bleakly with the specialist batsmen seemingly competing only for a

< 1 minute readSunday starts for County Championship matches and Twenty20 matches on a Friday night. It ain’t all bad. The latter could even become ‘a thing’, as detailed here. Shall we try and make it a thing? What should it involve? Perhaps we could try and source beer brewed in the counties

< 1 minute readA secret source writes: I thought this might interest you. It’s just like the 3am Girls in The Mirror, only with better grammar and more discussion about the state of County Championship wickets than they normally have. Overheard at the gym at the weekend – a regular first-team Lancashire player

2 minute readLet’s wrap things up. As ever, all fixtures and team names may be incorrect. The writer accepts no responsibility for factual accuracy. 1st – Durham Having won the County Championship, Durham promptly lost to Sussex. 2nd – Yorkshire Yorkshire beat Middlesex with a young scamp by the name of Ryan