County cricket

Eight counties in the first division of the County Championship?

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Eight counties, 14 matches, home and away against everyone else in the division.

Yeah, we’d be okay with that. Our official stance is that the second division doesn’t count, so it would seem a bit odd to get all het up about them having some mix-and-match half-arsed fixture list of indecipherability down there.

The first division is what counts. The first division is about establishing which is the best county (Lancashire). The second division is really only there so that you can get a vague idea who might have half a chance of being able to compete in the first division next year (Yorkshire).

It’s not ideal, but other than ‘a cup of tea right now this second’, what is?

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14 comments

  1. I honestly can’t understand why an 8 team division wasn’t what Morgan came up with. His proposed schedule has 19 slots set aside for 14 games, with the other fixtures squeezed in between, and a lot of confusing breaks where not all teams are playing. A 14 game fixture for 8 teams will need 14 slots (played in conjunction with a 14 game CB40/50 competition it would leave 12 free weeks for whatever).

    Even the second division can be scheduled quite cleanly. I’d prefer an 8 team 2nd div and another 6 (associate) teams in a 3rd division. But a 10 team comp in two conferences (8 games h/a, 5 home or away) and a final (limited to 180 overs across both innings) would retain a certain symmetry.

    1. You could have two smaller, parallel second divisions and then PLAY-OFFS.

      Schedulers love play-offs.

    2. Minor Counties in the second division is a great idea, like that Minor County, oh what’s their name, you know, that Minor County whose name I can’t quite think of at the moment, but that is very, very Minor indeed, more Minor than all the others put together, the very essence of the word Minor…

    5. A good guess, O Suave one. Just like Rutland, except more Minor and more rhyming with forkshire.

  2. Superb piece, KC – intelligent, thoughtful, deeply incisive, and based entirely in fact. The only way it could conceivably be improved is if you’d mentioned the Battle of Bosworth Field, or if you’d removed all that waffle about number of teams in each division.

    1. The Battle of Bosworth Field took place in Leicestershire, so under KCs proposals the Yorkists probably wouldn’t be scheduled to have this fixture.

  3. 18 teams and 14 games was clearly a joke idea. It’d be like Manchester United not defending the FA Cup or something. Oh…

    In all seriousness, if, say, Manchester United and Liverpool didn’t meet in the Premiership, it’d be a joke league. Were they suggesting turning the County Championship into a joke league?

    1. Yes, they were suggesting turning the County Championship into a joke league.

      They may still decide to turn the County Championship into a joke league in keeping with the general philosophy of doing the one thing no-one wants.

      If everyone’s equally dissatisfied, it’s fair.

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