As the County Championship returns, what is the state of play?

NICK FRIEND runs through the lie of the land at each county ahead of red-ball cricket's return for the final stretch of the season

For the majority of the competition, the next month will be an intriguing experiment.

Neil Snowball, the managing director of county cricket, admitted as much when he spoke to The Cricketer earlier in August.

“I think the true test was obviously when we got to the cut and we’ve got six teams who probably think this is a great format, and then you’ve got another 12 teams who maybe aren’t quite so sure,” he said.

There have been dead rubbers before – plenty of them – and it is nothing new for county sides to arrive in September with little to play for. But perhaps it has never been quite so pronounced, with six teams playing for a title and the rest with professional pride at stake. There is prize money too, and – if this conference structure is carried over into 2022 – performances from this year will be significant when seedings are calculated for next season’s group stage.

Snowball also insisted that he had encountered no resentment from the counties in the lower tiers, while one red-ball captain told The Cricketer that his players would be treating the games as seriously as any before.

“There is also an opportunity to play some younger players in first-class cricket,” Snowball pointed out. “I’m really pleased with the way that format has gone. The game will come together at the end of the season and decide what we want to do going forward.”

The Royal London Cup, far more than a second-team competition

Before then, however, there is a trophy to play for: Essex are the reigning champions but find themselves out of contention, having finished beneath Warwickshire and Nottinghamshire in a hotly contested group, albeit not helped by a Covid-caused abandonment against Derbyshire.

Whoever comes out on top won’t be done there, though; after the introduction of the Bob Willis Trophy in 2020 as a temporary replacement for the County Championship, there is a determination to retain both prizes in the calendar, not least to preserve Willis’ memory. Clubs were asked before the season began whether they would be in favour of a one-off game to determine the county champions and the Bob Willis Trophy winners – more in the manner of Australia’s Sheffield Shield. The proposal was declined, with the general feeling that it imposed too much importance on a single match, especially at a point in the calendar where the weather might play a central part.

“I still think that debate is to be had,” added Snowball. “Part of me loves the jeopardy – can you imagine if you ended up with Lancashire and Yorkshire in the Bob Willis Trophy final, playing off to determine who’s also the county champions.”

So, the Bob Willis Trophy will be played out between the county champions and the second-placed team as a “celebration of county cricket”. Quite what that looks like, only time will tell. At the end of an arduous month, it will be intriguing to see how much weight is given to an additional competition, not least one that finishes in October.

^{Hashim Amla began the season poorly but has found form for Surrey}

The points structure

There will undoubtedly be some early confusion as the divisional stage gets underway and fans attempt to understand the nuances of the newly assembled league tables, which see Warwickshire, Essex and Worcestershire – interestingly, all from the same initial pool – topping their respective groups.

It is simpler than it appears: each team will play four games through September without facing whichever side was in their group through the first half of the season. Instead, teams will carry over half the points they earned from the two matches against one another. Warwickshire, for example, begin at the top of Division One on account of beating Nottinghamshire home and away. They took 42 points from those victories, so carry 21 into this phase. Notts, on the other hand, claimed 10 points in defeat, amounting to a five-point carry-over.

This is how the counties are shaping up.

Division One

Warwickshire: Given the retirements of Ian Bell, Jeetan Patel and Tim Ambrose 12 months ago, this has been a fine effort from an inexperienced Warwickshire side, who ended Essex’s 22-match unbeaten run in first-class cricket en route to securing their chance of a first crown since 2012.

Under Mark Robinson, a former winner as head coach at Sussex, they have benefited from the emergence of Rob Yates – no one in the country has scored more than his three hundreds – and the shared potency of a reliable seam attack, which has seen Liam Norwell, Olly Hannon-Dalby, Craig Miles and Will Rhodes share 95 wickets. They will be supplemented for the rest of the season by West Indies seamer Chemar Holder.

Danny Briggs, who joined from Sussex at the end of last season, has picked up 20 scalps at 22.15 apiece, and will have to do the bulk of the spin bowling, with Jake Lintott – who made his championship debut in the final round of group fixtures – on Caribbean Premier League duty.

Somerset: The Nearly Men might have their best chance yet, with perennial scourges Essex out of the picture. Somerset began with an eight-point deduction and were outplayed for three days by Middlesex but recovered to win at Lord’s – a result that set the tone for both counties’ seasons.

Tom Abell’s side knew they would have to be almost faultless in a group whose top five teams were separated by just 37 points. Abell led from the front with 635 runs in 12 innings, while Craig Overton – one of county cricket’s best performers – was rewarded for 37 wickets at 13.4 apiece with an international call-up. Quietly in the background, Josh Davey has picked up 28 – an under-acclaimed county gun.

In a trivia question of the future, Jack Brooks became county cricket’s first Covid substitute, replacing Lewis Gregory. Azhar Ali has signed up for a third stint with the county to bolster Somerset’s batting for the run-in, while they will also hope to have Jack Leach available.

Lancashire: Matt Parkinson was the star of Lancashire’s fast start to the campaign, spinning his county to wins over Northamptonshire and Kent in displays that vindicated the decision to let loose the leg-spinner on the early rounds of the competition.

Until this year, Parkinson had only ever played two County Championship games before the month of June. His impact, though, was enabled by the consistency of his teammates’ batting efforts: Alex Davies, who plays his last games for the county before joining Warwickshire, Keaton Jennings and Josh Bohannon all have scored more than 550 runs so far, giving their bowlers plenty to work with.

Tom Bailey, one of county cricket’s most reliable metronomes, has taken 26 wickets – two more than Parkinson – at 19.19 apiece.

^{Matt Parkinson had hardly played a red-ball game early in the season before this year}

Hampshire: The midseason arrival of Nick Gubbins means that Hampshire are one of few sides who come into this business end stronger than they began the season. Only seven men have scored more runs in this County Championship than the former Middlesex left-hander, who recorded his first Hampshire hundred in just his second first-class innings for the club.

With the ball, they have had one of the stars of the season in Kyle Abbott, whose 43 wickets are four short of Luke Fletcher’s nationwide high. Mohammad Abbas, who claimed 27 scalps at 15.96 apiece earlier in this campaign, has signed up for the last five games of Hampshire’s run-in.

Mason Crane started the year in a similar vein to Matt Parkinson, before being left out through May as they changed tack and opted for Felix Organ’s off spin and superior batting. Conditions in September will surely suit the leg-spinner.

Nottinghamshire: The Nottinghamshire story is quite remarkable: Peter Moores’ men went 1,043 days without a victory in red-ball cricket before a comprehensive win over Derbyshire in May opened the floodgates for a run that saw them end the County Championship group phase with the most points in the country and in the running for the title.

They have been indebted to the wickets of Luke Fletcher, who has 47 in nine games and is set to pass 50 for the first time in his career. With the bat, Haseeb Hameed and Ben Slater have split four centuries evenly between them, while Ben Duckett, Joe Clarke and Steven Mullaney have also passed 450 runs.

They will have to do without Hameed initially following his international recall, while Stuart Broad – who took 23 wickets in five games earlier in the summer – is injured.

Yorkshire: Adam Lyth started the season better than almost anyone else in the country and, although that form didn’t quite last, he still ended the pool phase with 634 runs in 10 games.

Harry Brook, for whom this year has been a breakthrough of sorts, has made 576 but no other White Rose player has passed the 450 mark. Indeed, only Derbyshire in the entire country picked up fewer batting points between April and July.

The form of their bowling attack – Jordan Thompson, Steven Patterson, Dom Bess and Ben Coad – has been key, therefore. Only Nottinghamshire and Lancashire picked up more points.

^{Ed Barnard has enjoyed a fine year with the bat for Worcestershire}

Division Two

Essex: Perhaps the next month will be no stranger for any county than Essex, the serial title-winner who find themselves without a trophy to play for in September, having won the Bob Willis Trophy in 2020, as well as the County Championship and T20 Blast in 2019.

A shortage of runs beyond the bats of Tom Westley and Dan Lawrence was offset by the annual excellence of Simon Harmer, the most prolific spinner in the country yet again – with 39 at 25.46 apiece – though he has bowled, by a considerable distance, the most overs of anyone (439.4). They lost a 22-match unbeaten run to Warwickshire when Harmer went wicketless in a fourth-innings chase for just the second time in four years, while there was a pair of high-scoring draws with Worcestershire and a comprehensive defeat by Nottinghamshire.

Peter Siddle took 20 wickets in six games but has long-since returned to Australia, while Jamie Porter missed much of the Royal London Cup campaign with a side strain, placing plenty on the shoulders of Sam Cook.

Northamptonshire: Plenty has happened since Northamptonshire’s promotion to Division One of the County Championship at the end of 2019, a benefit they have not yet felt. But the chance to face Essex and Surrey – both established ted-ball sides – gives them an opportunity to lay down an intriguing marker.

In Ricardo Vasconcelos, they hold the fifth-highest run-scorer and one of the brightest players in the country; there are few top orders more watchable than one comprising him, Ben Curran, Emilio Gay and Saif Zaib – all of whom are left-handers with a classy flourish.

At the other end of their team is Ben Sanderson – less magical on the eye but as skilfully effective as anyone on the county circuit. He and Gareth Berg shared 19 wickets in a win over Sussex. They will be without overseas allrounder Wayne Parnell, who has returned home to South Africa.

Surrey: Surrey began badly, losing at Gloucestershire and following up with a draw against Leicestershire. They were different results that brought contrasting frustrations: they wilted at Bristol as Gloucestershire chased 229 in little over a session, before a flat pitch at the Kia Oval that was criticised by Alec Stewart allowed Ollie Pope to make 245 at almost a run-a-ball but also saw just 21 wickets fall in four days.

When Surrey followed up with an embarrassing defeat by Middlesex at Lord’s, Stewart described the three-day aberration as “self-inflicted” and “dumb”. They didn’t lose again, instead drawing five and winning two of their seven remaining games. The quality of their home surfaces made it difficult to create enough chances to force victories: Jordan Clark was their most prolific bowler with 25 wickets in nine games, but only the leading wicket-takers for Derbyshire and Worcestershire took fewer.

^{David Bedingham is the country's leading run-scorer}

Reece Topley was carefully managed through four encouraging appearances, while Kemar Roach claimed 22 in five games in his short stint – the same number of wickets as players picked by Surrey in their first 10 games, with injuries and international call-ups both all-too-regular occurrences. Ravichandran Ashwin took seven wickets in his solitary game, and Dan Moriarty has played just twice so far, but expect the left-arm spinner to combine with Amar Virdi through September.

Rory Burns was a measure of consistency, passing fifty more than anyone else in the country, but he won’t be available until the end of England’s series against India.

Gloucestershire: Having won four of their first five games and gone unbeaten through six, Gloucestershire will be wondering quite what went wrong for them to miss out on qualification for the top division. No team in Group Two won more games but none – not even bottom-placed Middlesex – accrued fewer batting bonus points.

After a fast start, they were fortunate to escape a rain-scuppered derby against Somerset with a draw – they were 27 for 6 in their first innings when hands were shaken – but then lost by an innings twice in a week. Before they fell away, roughly coinciding with James Bracey’s England call-up, they had beaten Surrey, Leicestershire and Somerset in excellent fashion – all three in terrific chases, while they battled for a dogged draw with Hampshire.

They were hindered by the bureaucracy surrounding Graeme van Buuren’s unavailability, though Ryan Higgins, David Payne, Dan Worrall and Matt Taylor shared 112 wickets. Gloucestershire have signed Pakistani left-arm spinner Zafar Gohar.

Glamorgan: Despite winning just twice in the group stage, Glamorgan were the closest challengers to Lancashire and Yorkshire, drawing six times as they finished 22 points off the Division One pace.

Only Middlesex and Durham earned more bowling points nationwide, with the trio of Michael Hogan, Michael Neser and Timm van der Gugten causing regular carnage. With the bat, Kiran Carlson’s tally of 790 runs places him behind only David Bedingham and Jake Libby in the national standings.

His stock has risen again since then, having led Glamorgan to their first one-day cup final victory at Trent Bridge. Only Rory Burns has passed fifty more often in the County Championship, while club captain Chris Cooke has struck three hundreds and David Lloyd is one of 20 batsmen to have breached the 600-run barrier.

Durham: Ahead of the season, Durham director of cricket Marcus North told The Cricketer that this was the third portion of a five-year plan to return the county to its former glories. They were a game away from winning the Royal London Cup and will reflect on the first half of the County Championship season as a pretty fair effort, finishing above Essex despite a three-point deduction for an accumulation of slow over-rates.

Remarkably – for a team that didn’t make it into the top tier – Durham have the country’s leading run-scorer in David Bedingham, who recently signed a new long-term deal, and the second-highest wicket-taker in Chris Rushworth, for whom this campaign saw him usurp Graham Onions as the most prolific bowler in the club’s first-class history.

At one stage, Bedingham was in the running to end Graeme Hick’s hold as the last man to 1,000 runs before the end of May. He was well supported in the run stakes by opening batsman Alex Lees, one of the country’s better players: he has 521 in eight games, a tally that Bedingham almost doubled in a remarkable group stage for the South African.

^{Somerset will hope to have Jack Leach available for their run-in as they look to finally win the title}

Division Three

Worcestershire: Jake Libby averages 58.9 since moving to New Road from Nottinghamshire at the end of the 2019 season. As England have struggled for top-order runs, the Worcestershire locals have been increasingly vocal about the merits of the 28-year-old, whose run tally this year has only been bettered by David Bedingham.

No one has faced more balls nor scored more hundreds, while Ed Barnard – who came into this season determined to improve on his batting output – recorded his first two career centuries, averaging 64.4 in the county’s lower middle order.

Rather, bowling has been Worcestershire’s problem: Joe Leach is the leading wicket-taker with 17 at 48.5 apiece, while circumstances meant that Brett D’Oliveira bowled more overs before July than he did in any previous season other than 2016. The emergence of left-armer Josh Baker, however, might lift some of that load.

Middlesex: The regeneration of Middlesex is continuing, with Steven Finn leaving for Sussex at the end of the season and Angus Fraser no longer the club’s director of cricket. Only Derbyshire accumulated fewer points in the group phase and no team lost more often.

Sam Robson was the only batsman to emerge with any real credit from the group stage, though Ethan Bamber and Tim Murtagh could scarcely have done more for the cause with the ball. Bamber has long been cast as a replacement for the former Ireland international, but they formed a potent partnership with the new ball, taking 36 and 37 wickets each, respectively.

Peter Handscomb, who was enlisted by Stuart Law as his overseas player and captain, desperately struggled for form, averaging just 17.46 through 13 innings. He has headed home already to be available for the start of the Australian summer, so won’t lead the county through September, with Murtagh taking over.

^{Sussex's Danial Ibrahim became the youngest player to score a County Championship half century}

Sussex: Times are changing at Hove, with the emphasis on youth being taken to the very extremes under red-ball head coach Ian Salisbury. There was a debut last year for James Coles, who became the county’s youngest-ever first-class player, while Danial Ibrahim has followed as the youngest player ever to score a County Championship fifty.

Archie Lenham is yet to make his red-ball bow but has impressed sufficiently in white-ball cricket that his chance may well arrive before the summer is out. Sean Hunt, Jamie Atkins, Joe Sarro, Henry Crocombe, Tom Clark, Ollie Carter, Ali Orr and Harrison Ward have all turned out in the four-day format this summer, but the county’s star youngster has been Jack Carson, the Northern Irish offie whose wicket haul is second only to Simon Harmer among the competition’s spinners.

The end-of-season departures of Phil Salt and Chris Jordan have already been confirmed, while Sussex have T20 Finals Day to look forward to as well, so it will be intriguing to see how they go about the month. Fynn Hudson-Prentice, who was already due to re-join the club next year, has brought forward his return from Derbyshire and will be available for selection, but won’t play against his parent club.

Tom Haines has scored 767 runs in nine red-ball games and has enjoyed a breakthrough year, captaining in the Royal London Cup. He will continue to do so: the county have announced him as their skipper for the next month, having removed Ben Brown from the role in July.

Leicestershire: Paul Nixon’s side arguably deserved more than a position in the third tier of this final month of the season; they go into September having picked up more points in the first stage than the rest of the bottom division. Marcus Harris was a late replacement as an overseas recruit, joining only after Wiaan Mulder was forced out by international commitments, but the Australian became one of the year’s more astute pieces of business.

He passed fifty on four occasions and turned three of those into centuries, including 185 against Middlesex in a five-wicket win that now stands as the county’s third-highest chase of all time. He was assisted in that victory by captain Colin Ackermann, while Lewis Hill has also enjoyed a breakthrough campaign.

Harris has since returned home, leaving Leicestershire without a figurehead who has set the standards for his teammates. Sam Evans made his first three County Championship centuries, while Callum Parkinson captained for the first time when Ackermann was ruled out by concussion protocols.

^{Each team will play four games, with the county champions then facing the second-placed team in the Bob Willis Trophy final}

Kent: Such have been Kent’s problems this year, 26 players have turned out in the County Championship. Even before their first team was forced to self-isolate after a positive Covid test among their T20 squad, injuries to bowlers had decimated a side that is far better than its record this season suggests.

Harry Podmore has been fit for just four games, Matt Milnes has played only five, Joe Denly has only been available twice and Sam Billings once. For all his enduring greatness, it says plenty that no Kent player has featured more than 45-year-old Darren Stevens.

James Logan and Harry Finch were among the beneficiaries of those problems; both were without a county but have become part of the county’s plans. Finch made a century on debut against Sussex to clinch a draw.

Derbyshire: A difficult first half of Derbyshire’s campaign ended in appropriately complicated fashion, with a positive Covid test leading to the abandonment of their game against Essex. It has been a difficult season for Dave Houghton’s side, having been hit by injuries to such an extent that head of talent pathway Daryn Smit came out of retirement to keep wicket in a Royal London Cup game earlier this month.

Fynn Hudson-Prentice, one of the club’s standout players over the last couple of seasons, has re-signed for Sussex. His departure leaves the county even shorter in the seam bowling department: they have been without Sam Conners, Michael Cohen, Dustin Melton and Nick Potts for significant stretches of the season, while Billy Godleman and Wayne Madsen have also had injury problems.

Overseas signing Billy Stanlake lasted just one game before being ruled out by a stress fracture. There have been some positives, however. Matt Critchley was the country’s leading player through the first five weeks of the County Championship – only four men have scored more runs in the country, while Ben Aitchison – in his first full season as a pro – has taken 20 wickets at 20.85 apiece.

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