From a farmhouse in Sedbergh

PAUL EDWARDS: There are also two games of cricket taking place at The Oval this week but the notion that I would be rather be in South London than the Howgill Fells is, shall we say, a little wide of the mark

It has, in truth, been a rather dismal week or so. Nine days ago I travelled to Leeds and watched Lancashire make 273 for 2 on the first day of the Roses Match, only for the second to be washed away by twelve hours’ rain, the third to be curtailed by Dom Leech’s nasty leg injury and the fourth to be lost completely because the umpires judged the ground at Headingley’s Emerald Stand End to be too wet.

If there was a consolation in all this, it was provided by the batting of Dane Vilas’s top-order and by the good judgement of the umpires, Ian Gould and Nigel Llong, who, having seen that the pressure of the bowlers’ boots had brought water to the surface, braved the understandable anger of the Headingley crowd by keeping the players off the field despite the bright sunlight.

The careful reasoning behind the decision could have been communicated more clearly but the decision itself was perfectly right and it was noticeable that both teams’ coaches took the trouble to acknowledge the respect in which Gould and Llong are held. Leech’s injury may have been the final prompt the officials needed to stop play but it was not the fundamental cause of their action.

I have, though, coped with very wet games before. Lancashire v Surrey at Blackpool in 2008 was a particular corker: four days in late August and no one got near to bowling a ball. Last week was different. As we waited to see whether there would be play at Headingley news reached us – actually, I suspect it was more like gossip – that the Royal London Cup was to be cancelled, partly because of the risk of Covid-19 but also so that virus-free cricketers could be ready to join The Hundred should teams be weakened by the pandemic.

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Given that there are eight sides in the new competition and there should be something like 300 players available this seemed rather an over-reaction. I had a vision of lines of English cricketers queueing like Monty Python’s gasmen, waiting to see which urban outfit required their services. As I say, it was a grim week, particularly so for someone like me, who is looking forward to the Royal London (see last week’s column). Suddenly I felt as though a world I know well and loved for good reason was being ripped away.

At which point I decided that was quite enough of the self-pitying nonsense and tried to take a rational view of things. Bizarrely, perhaps, the first thing I did was watch James Anderson take 7 for 19 against Kent a couple of weeks ago. Here was a master-craftsman at work, someone who had not played T20 cricket for nearly seven years, making the most of cloudy conditions to torment and then dismiss a batsman of the quality of Heino Kuhn.

^{The Hundred began on Wednesday evening}

What of it, you may say? Anderson is 38 and he has even been engaged to commentate on The Hundred. How can he reassure you? Well, I find it difficult to believe that cricket will ever hold skills such as Anderson possesses in such low esteem that they will disregard the format in which they are displayed. And there are plenty of other cricketers, almost all of them much younger than the man who will probably lead England’s attack in this winter’s Ashes series, whom you will not find in their counties’ T20 teams. Their futures also lie in the red-ball game.

A final question before I leave this sub-theme: what were you doing when England beat Germany in the Euros? Watching the football, perhaps? Anderson was working on his fitness, bowling on the outfield at Chester-le-Street and leaving nothing to chance in advance of Test series against India and Australia. Other players have the same goals and while they do so there will need to be teams playing four-day cricket. And it is the counties who have the coaches, the Academies, the grounds. The Hundred may be a thumping triumph but it is still a rootless parasite.

The next thing I did was ring one of my very wisest friends, someone who loves his cricket but is not directly involved in the game. Among his many useful comments was the following: “It’s so easy to catastrophise about The Hundred.” And, of course, it is.

What’s more, this is nothing like the first time an innovation has been viewed as the first of cricket’s passing bells. For over 40 years I have been reading articles in which the over-limit game, coloured clothing, central contracts and every speck of modernity has been slagged off something rotten.

Yet here we are, with England playing far more five-day cricket each year than was the case in say, 1990, and a County Championship which is still, for all its imperfections and its lopsided scheduling, a true test of the best first-class sides in England. And it is still the competition that most cricketers want to win. Yet a few days ago a writer whose wit, intelligence, insight and prose I admire enormously began a contribution as follows: “If county cricket survives the onset of Hundred…”

^{Dominic Leech will be fit to return to bowling in the near future}

Suddenly I was reminded of one of a song written by Noel Coward – ask your parents – in 1952 and preserved in all its glory on YouTube:

There are bad times just around the corner,
There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky
And it's no good whining
About a silver lining
For we know from experience that they won't roll by,
With a scowl and a frown
We'll keep our peckers down
And prepare for depression and doom and dread
We're going to unpack our troubles from our old kit bag
And wait until we drop down dead.

And now I’m going to strengthen my reputation for sitting on the fence by arguing that complacency is as powerful an enemy as pessimism. Therefore, people like me, who have grown up with county cricket are right to defend its many virtues and resist unthinking attacks upon it. So of course I will repeat my encouragement to readers of this column to attend Royal London games.

It’s daft to think all the counties are as well-run as we would like but dafter still to overlook their contributions to the game in England. The Hundred has already rendered English cricket a huge service: it has shown how much love and regard there is for the county game and not only in its traditional heartlands.

But at least I can leave you this week with proof that I am as good as my word. These words have been written in a farmhouse in Sedbergh, where on Tuesday Lancashire played Cumbria.

On Friday Dane Vilas’s team take on Sussex in the Royal London Cup. Yes, there are also two games of cricket taking place at The Oval this week but the notion that I would be rather be in South London than the Howgill Fells is, shall we say, a little wide of the mark. And I nearly forgot to tell you the good news about Dom Leech. He should be bowling against within two or three weeks.

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