County cricket: balls bring bore draws and Blast needs a boost

The Guardian

2 days ago

The County Championship returned for its first fortnight of high-summer matches (there's another in a month's time) and it was much welcomed, as always, at grounds and online. Less welcome was the return of the Kookaburra ball, which is being used to help England players prepare to play with it overseas. It's a good idea on paper – not so good on grass.
There were four draws in Division One. Call them nailed on or hard-earned if you like, I'm calling them boring. Perhaps batters need to be more positive: Essex scored 654 runs at Chelmsford at three an over and Hampshire weren't much better at the other end, compiling 453 at 3.27. Perhaps captains need to be bolder: did stand-in skipper Craig Overton need to set Warwickshire 377 (in 69 overs), a chase understandably declined?
If the four-day game is using the five-day ball, perhaps an injection of five-day attitudes to the draw might be worth a trial too?
It was no surprise that the one positive result in the top flight came at New Road, where champions Surrey steamrollered basement dwellers Worcestershire with five sessions or so in hand.
Rory Burns can call on six international bowlers, supplemented by the very consistent Jordan Clark and the pace of Tom Lawes, in for Dan Worrall. They're not all going to have an off-day are they? It was Clark and Matt Fisher who led the way in bowling out the hosts for 214 in their first dig and Fisher (again) and Nathan Smith who hogged the wickets second time round, Worcestershire mustering just 125.
Surrey are now two points behind leaders Nottinghamshire, who drew against Yorkshire, just 20 wickets falling to bowlers across four days at Trent Bridge.
Slightly against history, there was much more enterprise shown in Division Two, especially at Bristol, where emotions were still very raw after the untimely death of David 'Syd' Lawrence, an icon of Gloucestershire cricket – and beyond the West Country too.
With a daddy hundred of his own and another from Graeme van Buuren, Cameron Bancroft declared well past 500, setting Derbyshire 316. The visitors, tucked in behind runaway leaders Leicestershire, need wins if they want to secure the second promotion slot and they went off like a Brunel express train.
An opening stand of 177 in 31.3 overs set up the victory chance, but Harry Came and Caleb Jewell fell in swift succession and van Buuren was back to torment them, this time with the ball and Derbyshire fell 19 runs short, eight wickets down. A fine match, a worthy draw.
After two first innings, each of 400+ characterised by late middle-order runs, Toby Roland-Jones declared at Wantage Road to set Northamptonshire 311 for the win, Middlesex with 73 overs to take the 10 wickets. But he ran into a perfect storm of two centurions (Luke Procter and James Sales) and drops where the catches that win matches should have been.
Both sides needed to put together a run of wins to grab what looks like one available promotion slot, so a declaration that opened up the game made perfect sense. In the past, Roland-Jones would have been castigated for losing after a declaration, but I hope we live in more enlightened times. I hope too that should the same circumstance arise in Middlesex's next match, he does the same thing. Sometimes the winners win much more than the losers lose.
In the T20 Blast North Group, despite two consecutive defeats, Northamptonshire still enjoy a four-point lead at the top, with Lancashire, Leicestershire and Durham occupying the other qualification spots. Only Derbyshire and Yorkshire look out of it as the competition pauses for some high-summer red-ball cricket.
It's a similar picture down south, with Somerset leading Surrey, Sussex and Kent, with Essex tailed off and reigning champions Gloucestershire, despite two wins on the bounce, needing snookers.
I'd like to suggest making this break more meaningful, more natural, perhaps splitting into Trophy and Shield competitions, but it seems that it's all changing again soon. Can't The Problem Of The English Domestic Cricket Season be given to some bright MBA students as a case study and then make their pitches public for us to have a squint? Their ideas would surely be better than the miasma of compromise the suits usually come up with and foist on us for five years, before deciding that they need even more money and rip it up again.
It would be easy to say that England has so much history that it can be complacent about it, ignoring its potential. But India is hardly short of history either, and the IPL has done much more to create a sense of heritage for what was once an upstart tournament. You can't open Cricinfo or social media without seeing stories such as 'Which teenager has the best strike rate in death overs in IPL history?' or 'Which batter has hit a six and a four off consecutive deliveries and been out next ball most often for the Bangalore Balladeers?'
As shown by the Ploughman's lunch – both the meal and the film – history can be conjured from thin air and then used as a powerful marketing tool. English cricket should trade more off the oldest professional T20 tournament and less off a format ignored by the rest of the world (and plenty at home too).
Starting now, every Cricinfo question about the IPL, every morsel of inconsequential IPL clickbait on social media, every meme marking MS Dhoni's 50th leg-side stumping of a left-hander, should be mirrored by whoever runs that operation for the T20 Blast. It shouldn't be that hard to do.
This article is from The 99.94 Cricket Blog