***Official*** English Domestic Season 2008

[superkingdave]

Good start to the Pro40 for the French, long may it continue

 

[Goughy]

This Northants vs Leics CC Div 2 game is interesting.

Neither team has a player born in the county they are representing,

Neither team (as far as I can see) have one of the 6592 past or present England Internationals currently playing.

And Derbyshire have appreared to be trialing a new tactic of playing 4 specialist batsmen.

A great advert for why they shouldnt exist. Its crap quality, they dont produce talent, noone watches and their grounds are terrible.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

This Northants vs Leics CC Div 2 game is interesting.

Neither team has a player born in the county they are representing,

Neither team (as far as I can see) have one of the 6592 past or present England Internationals currently playing.

And Derbyshire have appreared to be trialing a new tactic of playing 4 specialist batsmen.

A great advert for why they shouldnt exist. Its crap quality, they dont produce talent, noone watches and their grounds are terrible.

Yes but they wont vote to have themselves disbanded. Which is the only way it will ever happen. Its like the Turkey voting for Christmas

 

[zaremba]

This Northants vs Leics CC Div 2 game is interesting.

Neither team has a player born in the county they are representing,

Neither team (as far as I can see) have one of the 6592 past or present England Internationals currently playing.

And Derbyshire have appreared to be trialing a new tactic of playing 4 specialist batsmen.

A great advert for why they shouldnt exist. Its crap quality, they dont produce talent, noone watches and their grounds are terrible.

Who do you mean by "they"? Northants, Leics and Derbyshire or all the counties?

 

[Goughy]

Who do you mean by "they"? Northants, Leics and Derbyshire or all the counties?

By 'they' I mean the bottom feeders of the County world.

 

[zaremba]

Again, I'm not clear whether you mean all the counties or the Kolpakshires or the under-performers?

 

[Goughy]

Again, I'm not clear whether you mean all the counties or the Kolpakshires or the under-performers?

Lets work it out. I mean the Counties that can be argued add very little and take a lot out.

Lets work on 4 criteria.

- Standard of cricket
- Talent production
- Market size, income and membership
- Facilities

If they fail in those 4 areas then they are pointless. If Im being harsh (which I may be less inclined to do so tomorrow or the day after) Id argue that they just take up space and take money from the ECB coffers and send it overseas.

If a country is playing bad cricket then if they have good support and a good ground and a decent infrastructure then you can think its just cyclical rather than terminal.

Even small market Counties can be useful if they work hard in their communities to build up a solid membership base and produce local talent and have a nice if not large) stadium.

 

[zaremba]

OK.

The reason I was trying to work out what you meant was that I agree that the route taken by Northants and Leicestershire is pretty unfortunate. Their team sheets very often look like a Who's Who of nearly-men and has-beens of South African cricket.

I also agree with your other point that the smaller counties, and county cricket more generally, have a lot to offer. Justin Langer said the other day that he believes the standard and intensity of cricket in Div 1 of the County Championship to be the equal of Australian domestic cricket. And the performance of newcomers the England Test team has now improved beyond all recognition from 10 years ago which shows that the gap between Test and county cricket has significantly narrowed.

As for the smaller counties, Sussex has shown that with a small ground and a small budget it is possible to excel. Part of the secret is a balanced approach to overseas players, a balance which at the moment is utterly lacking at Leics and Northants.

 

[Chubb]

Northants did produce Panesar, and Leicester Broad. But you do have a very good point. Northants have never really been consistently any good in a hundred years. Leicester is quite sad really because they did have such a good side in the late 90s.

 

[Goughy]

Northants did produce Panesar, and Leicester Broad. But you do have a very good point. Northants have never really been consistently any good in a hundred years. Leicester is quite sad really because they did have such a good side in the late 90s.

I think its a stretch to say Leic produced Broad. He may have played for Leic age groups but he is a product of his family rather than anything else.

If he had been brought up in Durham, London, or Liverpool I doubt he would have been much different.

 

[wpdavid]

Northants did produce Panesar, and Leicester Broad. But you do have a very good point. Northants have never really been consistently any good in a hundred years. Leicester is quite sad really because they did have such a good side in the late 90s.

And in the 1970's, although a lot of that side was imported.

As Goughy said, you struggle to see the point of these sides nowadays.

 

[aussie]

Monitoring Prior & in the last two games he has conceded 29 byes in his last two keeping innings.

Not that encouraging given Stewart saying he has improved his glovework but given that i haven't seen him play it probably could be wayward bowling.

 

[zaremba]

And he got a duck in the 1st innings v Hants

 

[steds]

Monitoring Prior & in the last two games he has conceded 29 byes in his last two keeping innings.

Not that encouraging given Stewart saying he has improved his glovework but given that i haven't seen him play it probably could be wayward bowling.

Tbf to Stewart, he may well have improved. His glovework might just be "****" instead of "nonexistant" now.

 

[Richard]

just have to be patient and wait for the next sabaticcal then we can have peace and sanity again for a while.

Highly unlikely to be some time other than "never".

 

[Neil Pickup]

This Northants vs Leics CC Div 2 game is interesting.

Neither team has a player born in the county they are representing,

Neither team (as far as I can see) have one of the 6592 past or present England Internationals currently playing.

And Derbyshire have appreared to be trialing a new tactic of playing 4 specialist batsmen.

A great advert for why they shouldnt exist. Its crap quality, they dont produce talent, noone watches and their grounds are terrible.

This is the one silver lining to the awfulness of the new T20 plan. With luck, market forces will make it untenable in the long run and it will result in the dregs of the County game disappearing.

 

[Richard]

After 42 overs in Surrey's second-innings, Harmison's figures are thus:
13-73-1
Plunkett's:
2-29-0

Even by their standards that's excessive.

 

[aussie]

Good to see former club mate Jonathan Clare doing well for Derbyshire, the bloke has real ability.

 

[steds]

Plunkett

 

[Richard]

Perhaps even more interesting is the story of a Worcestershire-man:

Worcestershire gave an outing to seam bowler Imran Arif, who is a curiosity. He has played for the second elevens of Sussex and Hampshire as well as Worcestershire, and also for the Yorkshire Academy. However, he still has a Pakistani passport and is therefore officially registered as an overseas player. This is his first-class debut.

Arif was born (in January 1984 - so 2 school years older than me) in Bradford.