Good stuff Much!

Coming in on a shaky 2 for 22, Gordon Muchall more than steadied the ship with a fine 175.

Well done Much!

Bunny’s Back!

An emotional day in a lot of ways.  Not only was Graham Onions back on the competitive field for the first time in 14 months.  He took 5 for 53, nice, as he seems to have come back where he left off; taking plenty of wickets.

But it also saw our whole attack looking like the attack of old, the attack of Championship winning form.  Demolishing Yorkshire for 149 in 60 overs.  After us not getting any bowling points in this fixture this time last year it was just the best to see the attack back to how we know it can be.  I wish had been there.

It’s Going to be Ok!

So sense prevailed.  No one saw any advantages in a reduced program of first class cricket, preferring the more obvious trimming back of limited overs matches, which have proliferated recently.

Championship division one stays as a 9 team concern and the Championship stays as the fantastic 16 match per season event that we know and love.

Would have been mad, having just produced an away Ashes winning England team, also presumably Counties would have risked a lower income from reduced memberships which include Championship matches but not T20.

The ECB have listened…. I’m nervous – this is a new thing, surely that can’t last can it?

But while they are at it….. Summer [and weekend] Championship cricket …..Please?????

And the Winner Is….?

…Not us, not this time.

It is the last match round of this years County Championship.  By this time last year we had won, unbeaten all year with two matches in hand. But this year is more like 2008, down to the wire.  Nottingham the leaders, slipped up and left us as Champions on the last day of that season.

The Championship really is the finest cricket on offer, especially in it’s first Division – there have been some stunning matches this season, many with exciting tight finishes.  If there have been draws it has often been because of weather affecting the match, batting out for a draw has been very rare this year.  Not being able to use the heavy roller and a points system favouring wins have forced competitive play.  This has been a hard fought competition without dead matches.

This year Nottingham, Somerset and Yorkshire are all in contention to win, the weather is out there too.  Notts have a slender lead, their fate is in their hands, but any slip up and less than full bonus points…..  Even the media are interested – Sky will actually broadcast live Championship action, they have chosen the Notts match.  Notts have buckled before, they did in 2008.   BBC radio are doing coverage of all four division 1 matches, the website is providing live text cometary too – all go!

Yorkshire play Kent – who will look for a good win to save them from relegation, meaning that the Hampshire Warwickshire clash cannot afford to be complacent.

We have our part to play – Somerset will need a win and all the bonus points they can take from us.  But we have players conscious of contract negotiations, we are at home and there is some rain forecast…

It is going to be an exciting end to a fantastic season.

Major Changes! Colonel Mustard now Captain!

It surprised us all, but Phil is now Captain.  So, all the very best to him, and good luck!

Start of the Season: I Was There, Honest!

It is never too cold at the Riverside to indulge in a blue ice lolly, what better way to watch Thorpy running in?

So not the most timely post ever.  Updating a blog and watching cricket are mutually exclusive, well they are for me anyway.   So I have been doing the watching the cricket.  The outcome of that will filter out slowly as and when.  There has been quite a lot of outcome from our first matches….

And the season is well under way when the ice cream van turns up – this is the rather plain one, [there is more than one].  Now this is a decent selection of ice lollies…

Finn on Fire!

I’ve not really rated Steven Finn, having seen him toil away for many an hour with the Middle.   For his time on the field he just did not get many 5 wicket hauls.  It seems that this season he is out to prove me wrong!

It is day 2 of the Worcester v Middlesex match and he has taken 9 for 37 and 14 for 106 for the match.  A bowler that England has not managed to knacker and now the stuff of legend!!

Hooray It’s The Start of the Season!

The Season; it used to start just before May!

The blog the Corridor has also noted this

” Last year it started on April 15; in 2008, it was the 16th. 2007? The 18th. The first Championship matches of the new millenium began on April 26″.

What is the point for this seasonal creep stupidity.  They actively want people to turn up and freeze, that is if the weather or bad light does not intervene.  They want cold players risk more injury?

I know Airlines are starting to sponsor Counties, but the carbon footprint does need to be addressed.

Start scheduling championship matches back into the summer – there is that talk about playing the first few out of the country now because someone has just noticed that early April is not a time when you should be playing cricket…..Abu Dhabi and Barbados, are not British or local?

Actually the weather is set for fair, so hopefully it will be a nice weekend [and that is rare]!

For a spot of what team is who you could look at Dan’s cricket blog. He has quite an extensive resume of the teams for this season.

Suave; A Man on a Mission!

As the county season is soon to be upon us, I will introduce to you my good friend Sauve.  A long-standing pillar of the cricket blogging community,  I find him refreshing and debonair.

He is off on a mission to the centre of the nebulous thing that is the County Championship – he may be some time and we wish him the very best of luck.

This could be the last season of the Championship as we know it – the sharman at the ECB are mulling over the entrails of last nights run over urban fox as we speak right now – divining the best configuration for the future format of this most important of English sporting endeavours.  Several of us have a bad feeling about this.

Haling from Essexshire, he will be starting his odyssey at the Ford County Ground, Chelmsford, at Essex’s first game of  the season against Hampshire on 9th April [so no not summer yet…Essex will also be our first opponents of the season next week] You can keep up to date with Sauve’s progress on Twitter @seasonstands and also via his couple of blogs A Season in the Stands; which will be tales from his journey.  And the old faithful republiquecricket. He will be working his way round all 18 county grounds.  He is also featured in Wisden’s cricket blog.

If things go well this season for both of us we will meet up at the finale of the County season, at the Durham v Somerset match.  As both the Championship and what happens to it are subjects close to my heart I expect there could be some updates on his progress on these very pages before that date.

Geoff’s Desert Jaunt

Geoff Cook looks forward to the forthcoming Abu Dhabi trip.  Here he is at last years MCC v the Champion County fixture held at the home of cricket, Lords.  The blurry form with him is the teams physio, Nigel, a busy man right now.