Posted by We’ve missed a couple of rounds of the County Championship because (a) the matches took place after a big slab of shorter format stuff, (b) pretty much all the matches were draws so there wasn’t much to say, and (c) we’re feckless and unreliable.
Last time around, Lancashire had gone slightly top; equal on points with Yorkshire, but ahead on either wins or because of the alphabet – we’re not sure which.
Lancashire are now a bit more top. They thrashed Warwickshire 11 bonus points to 10 with Steven Croft, Haseeb Hameed and Liam Livingstone all making hundreds and then went down to Lord’s for that ground’s increasingly traditional rain delays. The marvellously-named Nick Gubbins made a double hundred for Middlesex and The Great Neil Wagner played both matches.
Yorkshire only played once (and drew) which means the table now looks like this.
The only match to end in anything other than a draw in the last fortnight was Surrey v Nottinghamshire. Utterly bizarrely, Surrey won. Their two spinners, Gareth Batty and Zanzibar Fan Arsey shared 12 wickets in the match, which is quite a nice thing to happen in this day and age and seems a perfectly reasonable return for a team that’s willing to pick two spinners in the first place.
As for Nottinghamshire, they seem to have turned into one of those teams that’s good on paper but not on grass. This weekend they host Lancashire while Yorkshire will play Middlesex (and at Headingley, so they might actually get a game in).
I do hope that Yorkshire are playing Middlesex at Scarborough, not Headingley.
Otherwise Daisy and I are going to have a couple of very quiet days indeed Sunday and Monday in Scarborough.
Did you mention the final result: Middlesex 11, Lancashire 9, in the Gubbins and rain-affected draw this week. I saw a very precise points count for the Lancashire Warwickshire game, but couldn’t find the points count for the Middlesex fixture. #justelucidating
Scarborough? Who knew?
Should probably update the article.
Not going to.
Can’t be bothered.
Agreed, don’t update the article, otherwise it will make my comment thoroughly confusing and your comment on my comment even more confusing.
As it stands, the error merely presents an aura of whimsy and amateurishness for your kingdom, much like the entire political landscape of our once-great nation.
If you are so inclined Ged, you could always reach across the pond and grab that guy who seems to specialize in making nations great again.
I was thrilled to see a player named Zanzibar Fan Arsey and was pissed off you’d reserve the ‘marvelously named’ for some Gubbins. Excited, I went over to cricinfo to know more about this man. Surely, that couldn’t me a made-up name. It could not be, I told myself, coming from someone like you. KC was raised well, I thought – wouldn’t fool his readers. A stickler for truth – such a man wouldn’t stoop so lo…
Oh.
What % of games this season have ended in a result?
100, being as a draw is still a result.
On a less facetious note, 37 per cent.
Much obliged.
Now I appreciate the draw is indeed a valid result but I can’t be the only one who thinks “we are having a few too many draws here”, I’m sure.
I don’t really follow county cricket. Not properly, only in the “who’s likely to be the next cab-off-the-rank for England” sort of way.
Looking at that table, it doesn’t make me want to start taking more of an interest. I like the fact that cricket has draws. A drawn test match can be thrilling (as, I’m sure can a drawn county game), but a draw should not be the default result, ordained almost from the toss. Played 8, won 1, drawn 7 should not put you third in the table. Interestingly, it can also put you sixth in the table.
County cricket last year was much more of a spectator sport. This year it’s focussed more on who’s likely to be the next cab-off-the-rank for England, via the toss rule. The idea is to get more spinning pitches and pitches where you need actual pace to succeed.
The Lord’s and Taunton groundsmen, unfortunately, got confused by the change of rules and rolled out stretches of the M5.
Despite there seeming to be no actual way partial points could be awarded, you have to love a table that takes the points total to one decimal place. Does anyone know if partial points can occur, and if so how?
Anyway, whether it is possible or not, the use of rational numbers instead of limiting oneself to natural numbers opens the door to many new ways of scoring a league that cricket surely should adopt. There are hundreds of number systems that we could choose from. I would advocate using 3-adic numbers, mainly because in this system Nottinghamshire would need only one more point to be the closest team to Lancashire in the table, only being overtaken in that position should a team fall exactly 81 points behind.
Of course, not everyone would instantly understand that in a p-adic system numbers separated by higher powers of p are closer than those separated by smaller powers (a difference of three cubed in the case of Nottinghamshire putting them closer to Lancashire’s total than Yorkshire’s difference of only three squared). But baffling the public is very much at the heart of what the current system is designed to do. At least, I assume it must be, as there can’t be any other explanation.
“Breach of salary cap: Durham were subject to a 2.5 point penalty in the 2013 County Championship, as well as penalties in the limited over competitions, for breach of the salary cap in 2012. Despite this penalty, Durham still won the County Championship in 2013.”
Precedented, Bert, but sufficiently rare to render it an amusing quirk within the table.
This is the best brief explanation of p-adic numbers I’ve seen. Cricket league tables should appear in more maths textbooks.